ABSTRACT
Who makes movies? We’ve looked at the structural stuff of which film is made, at the economics that are part and parcel of the structure, and at the work of a few directors—and will look at more, especially at those who have gone beyond the Hollywood style, in a later chapter. But, especially when dealing with Hollywood film, there is often no one creative entity, no single author that we can name, as we can with a poem, painting, or piece of music. In the world of criticism, the very concept of the individual creator has come under examination in recent years. Some theorists hold that the notion of human individuality in general is just that, a notion: individuality isn’t a thing that every person automatically has, hard-wired into the brain, but an idea that a culture creates and maintains about itself and its members: a cultural construct.
