BY ROBERT SKLAR | For a few golden years, a generation ago, Hollywood film directors preened as artists (also known as auteurs, the French word for authors). Then the movie moguls figured out how to make big bucks producing and marketing comic-book blockbusters, and the pretense was over. Most studio directors became faceless functionaries who shouted at actors, "Scream as loud as you can at the blue screen, and the computer guys will put in the monsters later."
Most, but not all, says Sharon Waxman in Rebels on the Backlot. A former entertainment reporter for The Washington Post, now with the New York Times, Waxman profiles half-a-dozen young male directors (yes, that gender thing again) who have kept the preening auteur alive even in the corporate kingdoms of contemporary Hollywood, where accountants ride with royalty and artists usually carry the brooms and pans.