The people who describe all our work to us often don't know what they
are talking about. They're wrong. There are people, literally, people who
think that expressing an opinion is a creative act. The auteur stuff. I
think they were these French guys with cigarette ashes all over them and
that they basically misunderstood the whole thing.
-- Mike Nichols. "Mike Nichols: An American Master" (PBS)
Feb 2016.