1.Directors interpret scripts - even their own. When Joe Dante
decided to film the approach to the house in "It's a Good Life" set
against a backdrop of burned trees, he was interpreting Matheson's
script and even his career by identifying that house with the one in
Usher, also scripted by Matheson. I again quote Jean-Claude Biette's
conclusion to his piece on Wichita: "The job of the director is to
get the mosr out of the script - psychologically, morally,
ideologically. I can imagine no other definition of 'mise-en-scene.'

2. Directors have lots of input into the script-writing process, and
often continue making director's rewrites during shooting. This can
range from Cronenberg rewriter Poague's ghastly script for The Fly
and just not taking credit to sitting in the room every day together
(Welles and Manckiewicz, co-credited on Kane), to sitting with the
writer till a 65-pp treatment with detailed scene renditions is on
paper (Hitchcock), then reading drafts and giving "notes." Everyone
thought it was some kind of surrealist gesture when Resnais said he
followed Robbe-Grillet's Marienbad script closely, but AR pointed out
at the time that the way they worked on the script was SOP in
Hollywood.

There's a pricey French book which I wish we could have in English
comparing all versions of The Big Heat from book to film - The Double
Scenario of Fritz Lang - to show how mise-en-scene really begins at
the script stage, and writing continues in production and post-
production. Conversely, there's a funny article you can find in the
Herrick by a school teacher called "Rear Window: A Film by John
Michael Hayes," entirely based on the fact that there was a script
and Hayes'was the only name on it. Read the Cahiers Young Mr. Lincoln
piece for what this meant in that instance.

3. Look at M. Lange and Lumiere d'Ete, by two very distinctive film
authors, and tell me that Prevert is the author of those films.

4. Donen is a special case because his collaborators on the musicals
are so visible, and often co-signed. (Did you know, by the way, that
the sound of Kelly dancing was often looped by Donen, who was also a
dancer?) He pays tribute to collaborators more than anyone - look at
his Oscar speech - but he is also a lifelong technical innovator, and
I'd be careful about atributing any technical innovation in a Donen
film to Avedon or anyone else. Compare Donen to Sidney (also a
technical wiz, also at MGM) and it's night and day. I like both, but
Harvey Girls is definitely a small pleasure next to Singin' or Fair
Weather. And the latter are different in kind from The Bandwagon and
An American in Paris. That scale is a scale of film authors, from
minor to good to great, and it will continue to be constructed and
written about that way for the same reason that that school teacher
didn't do a follow-up article called "Peyton Place: A Film by John
Michael Hayes."

5. I love Evan Hunter's books as Ed McBain, and I just had the
pleasure of watching for the first time Strangers When We Meet, which
he adaptated from his novel. I'd say there's more Hunter in that film
than in The Birds, for obvious reasons, but I can tell without
reading it what the book would be like, and it would have few of the
qualities that make SWWM Quine's best film. However it was written,
it's Quine's handling of the party scene, ably executed by a great
ensemble cast, that makes the magic, not Hunter's cliched speeches
about crabgrass. Hats off to Hunter, whom Hitchcock considered a real
writer, capable of inventing stories and characters, and not just a
technician, but the visual plan of that party is the kind of blood in
the water I move toward - and I'm an old English major!