How much power should a director have over a production

On yet another drink-a-thorn with a few of my independent filmmaking colleagues (anyone see a theme here) an interesting topic for discussion was broached. The filmmaking folks in my circle of friends consist mainly of directors, producers and writers, so naturally the question revolved around the working relationship between the three. We talked a little about how things are done in Hollywood, but since most of us will never do more in Hollywood beyond taking the celebrity tour, we stuck mainly to how things are typically done and possibly should be done, and even could be done under various circumstances in the small-budget independent filmmaking world affectionately known as “indiewood”.

In that soul-crushing world known as Hollywood, the producer assigned by the studio exec is typically god on most productions. Only very famous and well-respected directors are allow “final cut” over a film they direct. Otherwise, they are just the person who executes the screenplay according to the wishes of the producer. And in Hollywood, the writer usually is long gone once the studio has bought the rights to his or her script. The final production shown in theaters could be something entirely different from what the writer intended. But unless you’re talking about an academy award winning screenwriter, the writer is generally considered just a provider of raw material for the movie and nothing more. If he or she writes a sensitive, heart-wrenching drama and it gets turned into a slapstick comedy, well that’s part of the soul-crushing aspect of Hollywood. Complications can rear up when say the director is also the writer, or the writer is also an actor and maybe an executive producer (or nephew of a rainmaker executive producer). Ah there are so many permeations. But for the sake of this discourse, we will stick mainly to talking about the low-budget/no-budget world of indiewood.

So in this beer-fueled discussion, I find myself the advocate for the writer. Two of my colleagues are directors who have also written and directed their own works. Another colleague is a producer. So I have this stack of screenplays I believe with all my heart are very good, but as an inexperienced director I want to shop them to a director I can work collaboratively with so as to make sure the intentions of my stories are faithfully put into a finished production, but without having to worry about dealing directly with actors, nor having to work out every camera angle and movement. One of my director friends says that I cannot have my cake and eat it too. If I hire a director to make my script into a movie, I must trust him or her and relinquish all my (as he calls it) backseat driving urges. There can only be one director and he makes the decisions on how to interpret the script.

Now hold on, my producer colleague says. The director reports to the producer and unless the director is Marty Scorcese, he doesn’t get the final cut power. My director colleague retorts that this ain’t Hollywood, and the producer is not the representative of the money people. The indiewood producer is just responsible for paperwork, and s hedging locations, and signing checks and arranging the food and coffee. At this point, I chime in with my own “this isn’t Hollywood” retort and express that the writer is the one who has slaved over every action and every word to get it all perfect. Since in indiewood, quite often it is the writer who funds the production, he should