What is the most important person in a movie?

[Jeritron]

Originally Posted by mitch_h I would say control went back to studios/producers in the 80s. I think they are all equally important, Paddy Chayefsky's scripts wouldn't seem nearly as good if amateurs had the parts over Peter Finch and Faye Dunaway. Citizen Kane is well written but it wouldn't be the masterpiece it is if someone other than Orson Welles was behind the camera. James Cameron was responsible for making Terminator 2 visually stunning, but it's solid script is what puts it above most other action movies. Etc, Etc

Yea, and it was written by him. It comes down to him being the director first and foremost, and the fact that the screeplay is his vision adds to that. He's an auteur. As the director and producer, he has the control to realize his script. That doesn't happen when the writer is simply the screenwriter. Never.

A great script is the skeleton of a great movie, but ultimately it is at the discretion of the directors and producers.
There are plenty of screenplays that have been gutted and modified to their liking. The average screenplay isn't even written by one party.

Also, thats not true about the studios taking back control. Maybe in studio run productions where a hired gun director is hire, but not the superstar directors. Superstar directors were a new thing in the 70s, with few exceptions before them. Pretty much just Hitchcock. He opened the door, and then Spielberg blew it off the hinges.

Even directors like Huston and Welles had very little control over their movies. Kubrick didn't get control over his projects as he would have liked until the director movement of the late 70s. That's why most of his defining works come after that.

Welles had control over Citizen Kane, and it was so panned by the powers that be, that he never got that control again in his life and naturally fell short.