The New Hollywood boom of the late 1960s and 1970s is celebrated as a
time when maverick directors bucked the system. Against the backdrop of
counterculture sensibilities and the prominence of auteur theory, New
Hollywood directors such as Robert Altman and Francis Ford Coppola
seemed to embody creative individualism. In Post-Fordist Cinema, Jeff
Menne rewrites the history of this period, arguing that auteur theory
served to reconcile directors to Hollywood's corporate project.
Menne traces the surprising affinities between auteur theory and
management gurus such as Peter Drucker, who envisioned a more open and
flexible corporate style. In founding production companies, New
Hollywood filmmakers took part in the creation of new corporate models
that emphasized entrepreneurial creativity. For firms such as Kirk
Douglas's Bryna Productions, Altman's Lion's Gate Films, the
Zanuck-Brown Company, and BBS Productions, the counterculture ethos
limbered up the studio system's sclerotic production process--with
striking parallels to how management theory conceived of the role of the
individual within the firm. Menne offers insightful readings of how
films such as Lonely Are the Brave, Brewster McCloud, Jaws, and The
King of Marvin Gardens narrate the conditions in which they were
created, depicting shifting notions of work and corporate structure.
While auteur theory allowed directors to cast themselves as independent
creators, Menne argues that its most consequential impact came as a
management doctrine. An ambitious rethinking of New Hollywood,
Post-Fordist Cinema sheds new light on the cultural myth of the great
director and the birth of the "creative economy."
