For more than half a century, a coterie of critics and
filmmakers has been making the case for what’s known as auteur theory: the idea
that great directors are the central creative forces behind their films,
shaping them just as authors shape their books.
اضافة اعلان
But outside a relatively small pantheon of great filmmakers,
most directors have continued to be overshadowed, at least in the public eye,
by their
movie stars.
The Hollywood strikes are changing that.
With striking actors forbidden by their union from promoting
studio films, directors suddenly have the spotlight largely to themselves, if
somewhat reluctantly. They have been the main attractions at recent film
festivals in Venice, Toronto, and Telluride, Colorado, and on press tours that
were once organized around A-list movie stars.
Even star vehicles must be promoted without their stars.
With
Denzel Washington, one of the most recognizable names in Hollywood, and
his co-star, Dakota Fanning, unable to promote the third installment of the “Equalizer”
series, it fell to director Antoine Fuqua to go on a one-man press tour.
“It’s a strange time,” Fuqua told a TV news reporter before
the movie’s September 1 premiere. “I would love to have them here.”
At the Toronto International Film Festival, Q&A sessions
after screenings typically involve actors and filmmakers, but this year, many
of the directors — including Ava DuVernay and Richard Linklater — answered
questions alone. Behind-the-scenes figures were suddenly in front of the
cameras: As the red carpet at the festival opened, a staff member warned
journalists and onlookers not to be surprised if they didn’t recognize some of
the people posing for photos, assuring them that they were associated with the
films.
Atom Egoyan, a Canadian filmmaker whose relationship with
the Toronto festival goes back 40 years, said the focus on filmmaking over
celebrity at this year’s event reminded him of the festival’s earlier years,
before the increasing presence of studio films made high-profile Hollywood actors
more of a central focus there.
“Certainly for auteur filmmakers, it’s been a breath of
fresh air,” said Egoyan, whose latest movie, “Seven Veils,” starring
Amanda Seyfried, debuted in Toronto last week. “The industry is going through
monumental transitions, and so this has been a nice little oasis.”
And as the Venice International Film Festival closed earlier
this month, director Yorgos Lanthimos accepted the competition’s top prize for
his surrealist comedy “Poor Things” without any of the film’s stars behind him.
“Celebrity is always going to sell more than a director,”
said David Gerstner, a professor of cinema studies at
City University of NewYork. “But it is a moment in which directors are being given the opportunity to
shine, to be the centerpiece. It’s just unfortunate that it’s under these
circumstances.”
It is not necessarily a comfortable position for some of the
directors, amid broad social pressure to stand in solidarity with unionized
writers and actors against the major entertainment studios they are at odds
with.
And there are already bubbling tensions: When the union that
represents Hollywood directors, the Directors Guild of America, made a deal
with the studios in June, keeping them out of the labor unrest, it drew some
criticism from striking screenwriters.
Caught in the middle of the studios that fund their
ambitions and the actors and writers who help realize them, directors tend to
tread carefully when discussing the strike.
“I can understand both sides,” director David Fincher said
earlier this month at a news conference for the Venice premiere of his movie
“The Killer,” whose star, Michael Fassbender, was absent. “I think all we can
do is encourage them to talk.”
It is a particularly complicated moment for directors who
are also actors or writers and hold several union memberships.
Bradley Cooper, who directs and stars in “Maestro,” about
conductor Leonard Bernstein, decided not to attend the film’s premiere at the
Venice Film Festival.
And Kenneth Branagh — who both directs the new Agatha
Christie mystery movie “A Haunting in Venice,” which debuted in theaters this
past weekend, and stars in it as detective Hercule Poirot — has decided to
leave interviews about the film to behind-the-scenes figures such as a top
producer, the production designer and the composer.
Between the multiple roles many artists hold, and the fact
that some actors have been given permission by their union, Screen Actors
Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, to promote
independent films, the landscape is a bit confusing.
“It’s a little bit like the wild west,” said Peter
Principato, chief executive of a Hollywood management production company that
represents directors, actors and writers.
People are making their own calculations, he said: Some are
simply following the letter of the rules, which allows multi-hyphenates to
promote movies in a director’s capacity, while others are more wary of taking
active roles. In some cases, he said, directors are required by their contracts
to promote their films.
Of course, some directors are as much of a draw as their
stars. Few directors attract as much natural interest as Martin Scorsese, whose
highly anticipated, Apple-backed film “Killers of the Flower Moon” is slated
for release in theaters next month, even if the movie’s stars, Leonardo
DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, are unable to act as the magnets for press that
they typically are.
And Fuqua, director of “The Equalizer 3,” has the kind of
heightened profile — thanks to a varied career creating music videos for stars
like Prince and Stevie Wonder, directing successful Hollywood thrillers and
making documentaries — that can make him a successful emissary for the film,
noted Alan Nierob, a publicist for the director. Fuqua promoted the movie by
speaking with “Good Morning America” about his career, with movie blogs about
the trilogy and with myriad other publications.
The strike is also testing the accepted wisdom of movie
marketing. Nierob noted that the limitations around promotion had not appeared
to affect the movie’s release; it topped the U.S. box office its first weekend,
earning just under $35 million. (Of course, Washington’s name on a movie poster
or face in a trailer may do the promotional work as well as any interview.)
But it is unusual to see directors carry so much of the
promotional weight on their shoulders. With this summer’s Disney horror-comedy
“Haunted Mansion” unable to rely on its big-name actors — LaKeith Stanfield,
Owen Wilson, Danny DeVito and Jamie Lee Curtis among them — its director,
Justin Simien, who is also a member of the Writers Guild, went on interviews
alone. “I felt pulled at the seams,” he said in an interview with The New York
Times.
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