Snippets from Strangers

Do you see yourself as an auteur?

No, not at all. I don’t even know what that word means, but I would assume it means that you write your films, like Woody Allen, or Tarantino, or the Coen brothers. I don’t think I’ve ever used that word in conversation, but it implies author to me. There are no “film by” credits on my movies and there never will be, because I feel like it’s such a collaborative process. It’s never “A Ruben Fleischer film.” It’s a film that a lot of people made and contributed to. Tarantino can say that because nobody else can make the movies that he makes. I see two versions of it. One is the Coen brothers who can do any genre and it’s specifically a Coen brothers movie. Another version is Ang Lee, who can make Sense and Sensibility, The Ice Storm, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and The Hulk, different movies that if you were to ask an audience wouldn’t know they were made by the same person.

Ruben Fleischer on 30 Minutes or Less, Between Two Ferns, and Gangster Squad