I do believe that there are auteurs, in the sense that there are filmmakers with very strong voices and their voices are communicated on to the screen without a lot of compromise.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I've always said to people that auteurism is nice, but it's hypothetical, and gradually you learn how much or how little influence different directors had.
I got picked for very unique and independent filmmaking experiences with auteurs. And I'm so lucky.
Every time you work, it's a new film, and generally when you work with auteurs, people that write and direct their films, there's always an originality.
People know that I have a great love for cinema. Not just for commercial cinema, but for the 'cinema d'auteur.' But to me, two of the great 'auteurs' are actually actors and they both happen to be French. One is Alain Delon and the other is Jean-Paul Belmondo.
They seem much rarer now, those auteur films that come out of a director's imagination and are elliptical and hermetic. All those films that got me into independent cinema when I was watching it seem thin on the ground.
The dean of the American Film Institute has written that I'm one of the very few auteurs in America. I've had freedom for 40 years to create art that is totally personal and is what I believe in.
I don't quite know what an auteur is.
I'm better suited to be a director, I think. I see myself as the general author. I hate the word 'auteur,' because it sounds so solitary when filmmaking is anything but solitary.
I don't really believe in the auteur theory.
I always argued against the auteur theory; films are a collaborative art form. I've had some fantastically good people help me make the movies.