I think people get fixated on certain ideas. I so often hear a film referred to (especially by lecturers in Media or Cultural Studies) as a 'text'. It's not a text, it's an artefact, a construct of which the 'text' - the script/screenplay - is only one element There are visual images, there are the performances of the actors, music, sound, editing, all of these things. The director is part of this, pulling things together, but in essence is pretty much a manager. As such, some manage with a heavy hand or involve themselves in every trifling detail, some trust their people and let them do things as they see fit, some are dowright bullies and tyrants. It is said that an extra on a Cecil B DeMille 'epic' was heard to wryly ask a colleague "Who do you have to sleep with to get off this movie?"

There are the producers, who know the kind of product they want. There is the author of the work being adapted, who may well have demanded and got a great deal of creative control. J K Rowling turned down offer after offer from film-makers she assumed would Americanise Harry Potter, (in some cases *coughDisneycough* she would have been right, of course).

The thing is that, when you look at books and poetry as well as painting and sculpture, quite often these are the work of a single person, an 'author'. But film (and TV for that matter) come from theatre, which by necessity is a collaborative venture.

That's why theatre, TV and film awards have so many categories. If auteur theory was the be-all and end-all, there would only ever need to be a Best Director award.