Mavericks: Interviews with the World's Iconoclast Filmmakers

The auteur theory—the belief that a director's personal influence and artistic control over a movie are so great that the filmmaker is regarded as the key artist in making a film—was first popularized in America by film critic Andrew Sarris. In the New Hollywood Era of the 1960s and 1970s, as weakening studio control granted directors more artistic freedom, the theory gained traction, embraced by both the media and by directors themselves, and it came to be a significant factor in the filmm...