I'd like to elaborate on a thread I posted on twitter. Confined to a series of tweets, I mostly rambled about Star Wars boss Kathleen Kennedy. But my main point is about film authorship, and how the entire concept is flawed.
Anyway: yes, Star Wars should hire a woman director. I've read numerous hand-wringing DGA studies about how female directors (especially in movies) are afforded far fewer opportunities than males, and the responsibility to fix that is on the studios -- even the smaller studios, like Lucasfilm. But Star Wars is also an outlier, because even if the movies have yet to hire a woman director, the franchise itself is being directed by a woman. And she’s made it clear that the franchise is larger, more ambitious, and more important than any single component.
A little history: around 70 years ago, a bunch of French academics started lionizing the director as the "auteur" of a given movie. (To give them credit, many of these academics were also filmmakers.) Their goal was to celebrate the achievements of certain American directors, such as Howard Hawks, who weren't yet recognized as artists. And, y'know, good for them -- Hawks deserved recognition. But their conclusions were hardly conclusive. Ever since then, academics have been debating the merits of film “authorship” and whether auteur status is possible in a medium where hundreds of individuals work on a single project.
Humans love asking, "Who is responsible for this?" And a lot of art is a solitary accomplishment. Books have authors, paintings have artists. Usually just one. But theatre? Television? Movies? When a work of art involves writers, actors, producers, camera crews, lighting directors, set designers, etc. etc. etc., all operating in unison... can we really say that the director is the one true visionary?
A quick example: Stanley Kubrick, who’s widely hailed in film circles as a genius and a trailblazer and a master of cinema. Kubrick was a quiet tyrant on his sets, demanding take after take until he had captured his exact vision on film. And what was his vision? Well, he pretty much stuck to adapting novels. Dr. Strangelove, 2001, Clockwork Orange, Paths of Glory, Spartacus, Lolita, Barry Lyndon, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, Eyes Wide Shut -- they were all based on books. Can Stanley Kubrick be considered an auteur if he never made anything original?
That's not fair, nor is it particularly nice to Kubrick (who was a genius, of course), but my point is that giving overwrought credit to directors is often done at the expense of their collaborators.
Way before Star Wars, before Kubrick, before French academics, the very first auteurs weren't even people, they were studios. The studio logo was the first credit you saw on the big screen, and it announced what kind of movie you were about to see. A Warner Bros. picture was not an MGM picture was not a Paramount picture was not a Columbia picture was not a Fox picture. Regardless of the talent in front of or behind the camera, the studio was the name. This policy of collecting and co-opting credit under one roof was weirdly honest, in its own corporate way. The studio was the father, the mother, the holy ghost, the money, the production, the distribution and the exhibition. It all started with and came back to the company. More than anything, this is the model that Lucasfilm seems to be emulating, but with a cool twist: the franchise itself is now in charge. Star Wars is the auteur of Star Wars. Maintaining the integrity of the franchise is more important than any individual.
This is a big change from the George Lucas days, because Lucas was one of the few undeniable auteurs of American movies. He not only wrote and directed and produced his movies -- after the first Star Wars he even began to finance them, all the while creating entirely new companies to advance his visions for special effects, sound mixing, and computer animation. And make no mistake, his vision was dominant. Nobody considers The Empire Strikes Back to be an Irvin Kershner joint. ESB is, first and foremost, a Star Wars movie.
And as the recent hirings and firings at Lucasfilm have illustrated, a Star Wars movie is bigger than any individual director. The director is an important member of the crew, and clearly has creative input, but s/he is still just that -- a creative collaborator. Josh Trank, Miller & Lord, Ron Howard, Colin Trevorrow, J.J. Abrams -- all talented guys. But look at the ease with which they were swapped in and out.
The auteur of Star Wars is Star Wars. Lucasfilm employs writers, directors, executives, artists, a story group, licensees, technicians, futurists, and everything in between, and they all serve the same master: the franchise. Lucasfilm makes movies, novels, comics, games, cartoons, and every consumer product imaginable. No single director is important enough to derail that train, and if they think they are, they're given the boot.
The auteur of Star Wars is Star Wars, and Kathleen Kennedy understands that. In addition to everything else involved in running a multi-billion dollar empire, she’s the ultimate gatekeeper, the one who makes the sure that the franchise takes precedence over all else. No matter who's directing Episode IX, she's directing Star Wars.
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