
Louis CK is the world's first auteur filmmaker - shalmanese
https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueFilm/comments/43hwdj/louis_ck_is_the_worlds_first_auteur_filmmaker/
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dalke
This piece seems to want to redefine 'auteur' to mean "there is nobody else".
However, and quoting "auteur theory" on Wikipedia:

> In film criticism, auteur theory holds that a film reflects the director's
> personal creative vision, as if they were the primary "auteur" (the French
> word for "author"). In spite of—and sometimes even because of—the production
> of the film as part of an industrial process, the auteur's creative voice is
> distinct enough to shine through studio interference and the collective
> process.

The American Heritage Dictionary describes 'auteur' as:

> A filmmaker, usually a director, who exercises creative control over his or
> her works and has a strong personal style.

The author acknowledges that "filmmaking is where auteur theory first got
developed and still where it feels the most comfortable and dominant", so
knows there are already auteur filmmakers, which makes it impossible to accept
the qualifier "first".

Sticking "auteur filmmaker" into Google newspaper search shows that Woody
Allen, Sergio Leone, Quentin Tarantino, Spike Lee, Cronenberg, Yahoo Serious
and others have all been given that label. These all fit the above
description.

Thus, this piece only makes sense if 'auteur' is being used with some
alternate definition. But that was never given. Nor does it make sense to re-
use a well-known term. Nor is there any reason why these filmmakers should not
deserve the term 'auteur'.

For that matter, there are any number of films which were made completely free
of the studio system. "El Mariachi" comes to mine, which "helped usher in the
independent movie boom of the early 1990s." Or Andy Warhol's films, which were
avant-garde films completely outside of the film industry. "Sleep", for
example, was created as an "anti-film."

The author uses the waiver "I am far from a film historian", but I am likely
even less of a film historian, and still know enough to refrain from saying
"world's first auteur filmmaker", so can only assume it's meant as clickbait,
and the waiver disingenuous.

