| Post-Fordist Cinema: Hollywood Auteurs and the Corporate Counterculture Contributor(s): Menne, Jeff (Author) |
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ISBN: 0231183712 ISBN-13: 9780231183710 Publisher: Columbia University Press OUR PRICE: $31.68 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: February 2019 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Performing Arts | Film - History & Criticism - History | United States - 20th Century - Business & Economics | Industries - Entertainment |
| Dewey: 791.430 |
| LCCN: 2018025467 |
| Series: Film and Culture |
| Physical Information: 0.6" H x 5.9" W x 8.9" (0.80 lbs) 272 pages |
| Themes: - Chronological Period - 20th Century |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: 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." |
Contributor Bio(s): Menne, Jeff: - Jeff Menne is assistant professor and program director of Screen Studies at Oklahoma State University. He is the author of Francis Ford Coppola (University of Illinois Press, 2015) and the co-editor of Film and the American Presidency (Routledge, 2015). His work has been published in Cinema Journal, Postmodern Culture, and Post Script. |