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Allen Smithee specializes in the mediocre. He is versatile. He is prolific. Andhe doesnt exist. From 1969 until 1999 Allen Smithee was the pseudonym adoptedby Hollywood directors when they wished not to be associated with filmsostensibly of their making . Encompassing over fifty films of various stripes B movies sequels music videos madeforTV movies Smithees threedecades of work affords the authors of this volume a unique opportunity toreassess the claims of auteurism both in its traditional guise and in the morecommodified form it currently assumes.Sometimes treating Smithee as an auteur in much the same way critics andscholars have treated directors as diverse as Douglas Sirk Abbas Kiarostamiand Quentin Tarantino the contributors reclaim new possibilities for auteuristfilmmaking and film studies even as they show what an empty display it hasrecently become. In accounting for this change the essays in this volumeemploy innovative theories of authorship to recapture the subversive effectthat auteurism once enjoyed. Thus the Smithee name becomes part of a largerdiscussion of the economics and history of pseudonyms in filmmaking notablyin the blacklist of the 1950s as well as an opportunity to employ JacquesDerridas theory of the signature to recover obscured economic and historiccontexts within Smithees films.Unique in its focus innovative in its approach Directed by Allen Smitheeargues that it is precisely through throwaway films such as Smithees thatrecent Hollywood cinema can best be studied. «
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