Proximity Muse

Photoshopped? I have no idea what you’re talking about. But I’m not here to discuss my meager Photoshop skills. What I’d like to talk about is auteur excess.

The best example I can give you is Heaven’s Gate. No, not the religious loonies, the film by Michael Cimino, the director of The Deer Hunter. Cimino was so out of control on that film that when it crashed and burned (one reviewer likened watching the movie to a three hour guided tour of his own living room) it took a studio down with it. Auteur excess is all about believing you are the only person who really knows how the story/movie/play should be done, and anyone else is just meddling in things they don’t understand. It is about ignoring any and all advice about your project. It is the ultimate form of artistic arrogance. I can almost hear the clicking of keys as folks do a Google for Cimino and I know what you’ll say once you’ve looked him up.

“Aha!” You’ll say, “That bastard never did anything major again. It was his downfall.”

And that’s all true. But what about people who get away with auteur excess? As might be guessed from the picture header, I have some suspects in mind.

The Clown

I like many of Quentin Tarantino’s movies. When he’s good, he’s really good as is the case with Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill. But when he’s bad, oh boy. Watch out! His characters just keep talking and talking and talking and talking and…you get the idea. Some people have tried to tell me I just didn’t get it, but I still believe Death Proof was a terrible movie. It was an hour of talking to set up a 20 minute car chase. Death Proof was the movie equivalent of Tarantino whacking off.

I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, however, so I saw Inglorious Basterds last summer. It was really not good. I won’t say it was terrible, but it wasn’t great. The movie suffered from too much Tarantino. I saw a review that said something along the lines that Tarantino the director was too much in love with Tarantino the writer. I agree whole-heartedly with that. It’s no challenge to pick out a number of spots in the movie where an editor that wasn’t so enamored of his own work would have cut early. A number of scenes just go on and on, draining away any tension the scene might have had with sheer fecundity. I say that Inglorious Basterds was one editor and one producer away from being a fantastic movie. As it is, the auteur triumphed and the movie suffered for it.

The King

Stephen King is one of my favorite authors. I even enjoy some of his books that I really have no business liking such as Needful Things and Tommyknockers. Neither of those books was great, but neither of them were as awful as Insomnia either (possibly the worst book Mr. King has ever written). I’ve enjoyed most of his offerings since he finished the Dark Tower series and “retired.” Cell was alright and Duma Key stole ideas directly from my brain, but nothing he’s written in the last 20 years has come close to the brilliance of The Stand. You might guess at my excitement when I saw the press blurbs for Under the Dome. “As big as The Stand!” they said. “Chock full of characters!” they said. I checked when it was going to come out, then put it out of my head until after my semester was over. No way I was going to start on a 1000 page King book around finals time.

Finals over, I got the book. It’s awful. Only Insomnia is worse. You know why? The book is full of characters I’ve already seen and situations I’ve already read. The bad guy comes directly from Needful Things, the good guy from The Stand. The whacko sheriff from Desperation makes an appearance, as does a gang of kids in the tradition of It. The dome itself and the reason it appeared are mainly forgotten for 500 pages. Mr. King says he doesn’t like to plot books, and usually I’m right there with him, cheering. In this case, some notes would have been good. What would have been even better was an editor with the nuts to tell Mr. King that he needed to cut the fuck out of that book. Just as with Tarantino and Inglorious Basterds, Mr. King is too in love with his own work. The auteur wins at the expense of the fans.

The Point

I do have one. Here it is. No one creates anything in a vacuum. Everyone needs useful feedback on their work. Find some people you can trust, some people that know their stuff and let them do their jobs. Listen to them when they say things. You might think 50+ pages of your main character doing household chores in the buff is awesomesauce, but most people won’t. Find people who will tell you when your stuff sucks and why. Find people who can tell you where you need to make cuts. As soon as you start thinking you are the only authority on your work, you need to step back and think again.