I’m not talking about Depp’s “clout,” I’m talking about the strength of his characterizations.
Depp imposes upon films his idea of what the film should be, by creating characters that are often wildly different from what the director may have originally envisioned. You can see this process at work in the documentary Lost in La Mancha, as Terry Gilliam and Johnny Depp discuss Depp’s character (in Gilliam’s failed movie about Don Quixote).
Examples of films where Depp’s charaterizations are so strong that they drive the movie:
Pirates of the Caribbean
Benny and Joon
Don Juan DeMarco
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Ed Wood
It may be a matter of definition, and particularly how broadly you define the word “auteur.” The word was coined to describe directors, so it will not fit perfectly with an actor, I think. Depp comes closer than any other modern, non-directing actor to being able to impose his vision on a film.
I don’t understand. Sellers is the exact opposite of typecast - he played three very different characters in Strangelove, and was supposed to play Major Kong also - but broke his leg. But Dr. Strangelove is Kubrick’s - the details of technology appear here, in 2001, and in Barry Lyndon, to name three.
I think Sellers is one of the few actors Kubrick allowed free rein to. I was startled, when watching Eyes Wide Shut, how Tom Cruise’s eye and head movements mirrored those of Keir Dullea in 2001.
I’m going to nominate Edward Norton here. He has a reputation for wanting to be involved in the creative decisions in a film production. According to the IMDB, he has taken on producer roles in several of his recent and future movies in which he also acts in order, I assume, to more directly exert his opinions. I remember hearing rumors that he rewrote the script to his then-girlfriend Salma Hayek’s pet project, Frida, for which he recieved a “special thanks” credit.
That said, he does know when to let the David Fincher’s and Spike Lee’s of the world do their thing.
As far as my understanding of the term goes, auteur * is a pretty rarified title. Only a tiny handful of directors (and a tinier handful of actors and writers) over the history of film have been worthy of it. I’d be hard pressed to name a handful of directors working today who are genuine auteurs: Wong Kar Wai, Miike, Panahi, Kiarastomi, Verhoeven, Waters, maybe Scorsese, maybe Fincher, maybe Haynes. Coppola (père), while being an immensely talented director, has too scattered a vision to be designated an auteur (alway IMO, of course).
So, going by this tradional definition of the word–which, after all, is the definition of the guys who invented the word–none of the actors this side of RC’s list really qualifies.
*Note that *auteur * does not denote quality of work; only unity of vision.
First of all, I’m don’t really think an actor wearing no other hat can or should be considered an auteur, so I’m not sure how thoroughly you’ve been reading my posts. Secondly, if the comedic actors you previously mentioned are auteurs, then the only thing seperating them from Parker and Stone is your bias. They are not typecast. They are nuturing characters that they’ve created and portrayed on the large and small screen for almost 15 years now. And Parker is absolutely the auteur of South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut and Team America: World Police. A reasonable person would find it very difficult to disagree with that. How many other people today write, direct, play the lead, and compose and perform the score of a movie? Add the qualifiers of financially and critically successful and your answer dwindles further.
Finally, with respect to your adoration of Andrew Sarris, he is neither the originator of, nor the be-all, end-all authority on the auteur theory.
Not sure who you’re arguing with; no one here has expressed any adoration of Sarris, nor suggested that he’s the exclusive authority on the subject. And if you continue to insist that one person is “the auteur of” any one particular movie, then you very clearly aren’t reading *my * posts. You continue to use it interchangeably with the word “author,” which is to use it incorrectly. The reason I referred you to Sarris is because the essays I mention happen to a couple essays–among other, by many other authors–that clearly and succinctly gives you a sense of what the word auteur actually means. Again, it does not equal “author,” and it does not equal “driving force on any one particular movie.”
In any case, your earlier references to Parker and Stone were specifically as actors; you identified them by their character parts. Obviously a stronger case can be made for them as writers and directors. I daresay there “vision” may be more unified than Coppola’s, but that may simply be because the sample size is so small. AFAIC, they have not yet earned the appellation.
Did you read my post #37? Orson Welles is the man that Truffaut had in mind when he coined the term and he never had creative control to the extent he did with Citizen Kane, before or after that. He is indeed considered an auteur based on being the driving force behind that one particular movie (that’s not to say it’s the only thing with merit he ever did.)
I guess since it is a subjective theory, it is open to loose interpretation - such as guys like me who think Kevin Smith and Wes Anderson belong with Kurosawa and Hitchcock as auteurs - or a strict interpretation - such as guys like you who think all the auteurs in the history of cinema would fit comfortably in the back of a Volkswagen. For what it’s worth, I’ll agree that Adam Sandler, Edward Norton, and Johnny Depp aren’t even close.
I haven’t read the Truffaut, but hardly anyone, ever had the kind of control over a movie that Welles had for Citizen Kane. That’s kind of the point of the auteur theory: the vision of all the “canon” auteurs shines through the studio constraints. So whether one is an auteur or not has nothing at all to do with whether one has final cut. John Ford never had final cut. Neither did Nicholas Ray. Neither, as you point out, did Welles, after CK. So final cut is irrelevant to the discussion.
In other words, I doubt pretty highly that Truffaut discounted all post-CK when designating Welles as an auteur. In other other words, I doubt Welles was dubbed an auteur strictly on the basis of a single film. But I haven’t read the Truffaut.
I guess that Woody Allen qualifies, in that nearly all the movies he’s directed feature a neurotic Jew who, in recent years, has women like Charlize Theron trying to sleep with him.
But not as an actor, which is the point of the thread. Okay, granted, he always plays a neurotic dweeb who sleeps with beautiful women, but that’s a product of the fact that he writes and directs the films, which disqualifies him from the possibility of being solely an acting auteur.
Actually, now that I think about it, I think that’s why Allen makes films; to pretend women who look like Mira Sorvino and Scarlett Johannsson would ever be interested in someone who looks like him.
And as to the subject of the OP, I say any actor who directs himself doesn’t count; if he is an auteur, it’s because he’s a director, not an actor. Mae West was in charge of her productions. If not on paper, certainly in reality. And in those days directors were journeymen for hire; the auteur was even rarer. Even so, that alone doesn’t make her an auteur, IMO. Her auteurship stems from the consistency of her vision, and how it was apparent from film to film to film. She’s pretty unique, history-of-film-wise: actor as auteur; not to mention a woman; not to mention a comedian. Can’t think of anyone who could possibly challenge her status as a true one of a kind.