The New Hollywood boom of the late 1960s and 1970s is celebrated as a time when maverick directors bucked the system. Against the backdrop of counterculture sensibilities and the prominence of auteur theory, New Hollywood directors such as Robert Altman and Francis Ford Coppola seemed to embody creative individualism. In Post-Fordist Cinema, Jeff Menne rewrites the history of this period, arguing that auteur theory served to reconcile directors to Hollywood’s corporate project.

Menne traces the surprising affinities between auteur theory and management gurus such as Peter Drucker, who envisioned a more open and flexible corporate style. In founding production companies, New Hollywood filmmakers took part in the creation of new corporate models that emphasized entrepreneurial creativity. For firms such as Kirk Douglas’s Bryna Productions, Altman’s Lion’s Gate Films, the Zanuck-Brown Company, and BBS Productions, the counterculture ethos limbered up the studio system’s sclerotic production process—with striking parallels to how management theory conceived of the role of the individual within the firm. Menne offers insightful readings of how films such as Lonely Are the Brave, Brewster McCloud, Jaws, and The King of Marvin Gardens narrate the conditions in which they were created, depicting shifting notions of work and corporate structure. While auteur theory allowed directors to cast themselves as independent creators, Menne argues that its most consequential impact came as a management doctrine. An ambitious rethinking of New Hollywood, Post-Fordist Cinema sheds new light on the cultural myth of the great director and the birth of the “creative economy.”

"Menne’s book offers not only a history of the "new Hollywood” of the late 1960s and early 1970s, but also a deft examination of what was lost and what was gained as filmmaking dealt with television and the loss of a theater audience." - Choice

"Menne provokes a reassessment of New Hollywood, a golden age of the director
in American cinema, as non-auteur driven. Such revision does not necessarily dilute
the achievements of the filmmakers who reinvigorated Hollywood but encourage us
to appreciate them for resisting deification as auteurs in order to increase the artistic
contributions from the bottom-up in their productions during this period." - Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television

"With its bold rethinking of New Hollywood, Menne’s book is undeniably appealing to film scholars. It should also appeal to readers seeking to understand how creative works encode abstract processes of capitalist development." - Film Quarterly

"Impeccably researched, Menne’s monograph brings fresh clarity to New Hollywood’s industrial machinations . . . [Post-Fordist Cinema] refreshes the domain of auteur theory in ways both insightful and original." - This Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory

"This book is perceptive, creative, and provides a refreshing perspective that compares art and business during the most radical time in Hollywood history." - Film Matters