It can sometimes feel like films narrate our lives. “Everyone has a movie that has mattered to them in their life,” says writer and editor Ryan W. Bradley, who selfishly “wanted to read other people’s stories about the movies they love.” In 2022, Bradley, who lives in southern Oregon, came up with an idea he was eager to launch: What if someone created a series like the acclaimed 33 ⅓—slim volumes about popular music, focusing on individual albums by a wide range of artists, published by Bloomsbury—for films? Bradley knew he could do it—he had previously run an indie press for five years—but he wanted some help. So he took to Facebook to gauge interest, and the idea quickly gained traction. Soon he was chatting with Robert Lasner, the editor in chief of Ig Publishing, about how to make the series a reality.
Bradley considers himself a lifelong student of film. He was raised by parents with eclectic cinematic tastes and grew up watching Alfred Hitchcock, Akira Kurosawa, and W. D. Richter. For this series he wanted to invite writers to explore and expand upon their unexpected connection to the silver screen. After a few e-mails and calls with Lasner, the Auteur series was born.
So far the series contains two slender book-length essays, each focusing on a different film, together showcasing a range of styles, published in May and June of this year. In After Hours: Scorsese, Grief, and the Grammar of Cinema, Emmy Award–winning writer Ben Tanzer uses Martin Scorsese’s 1985 black comedy film to explore the persistence of grief. Tanzer had been considering this idea for years—his father died in 2000 at age fifty-nine from what Tanzer has previously described as a “twisted form of cancer”—and he says Auteur gave him the space to wrestle with “more material and more emotions.”
Scorsese’s film revolves around a young man trying to get home after work and what his misadventures reveal about the trappings of a nine-to-five job. Tanzer taps into the existential undertones of After Hours and applies them to memories of his own father, who was an artist, to better understand the relationship between grief and creativity. Scorsese’s work is the principal focus, but Tanzer also considers how his father’s death shapes his own ideas about art. His style sheds the typical throat-clearing rigidity of film criticism and embraces a looser, more personal voice.
This kind of stylistic freedom also attracted Maia Wyman, a video essayist and media critic, to the Auteur series. In her book, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: Love, Loss, and the Fade to White, Wyman uses Michael Gondry’s 2004 romantic sci-fi film as a lens through which to process her own personal heartbreak. Writing the book felt like a departure from the more academic content she posts on her YouTube channel. Wyman happened to be reading Joan Didion’s work while writing; that, combined with Bradley’s guidance, gave her the confidence to try a more experimental style of writing. In addition to rewatching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Wyman revisited diary entries she’d written during her breakup for inspiration. She describes Gondry’s film as a “hologram” because each viewing experience contains a different revelation.
In many ways that is also an apt descriptor for the Auteur series. Not only does it encourage writers to find new modes of interpreting old favorites, but it also invites readers to do the same. The next title, currently scheduled for publication in 2026, features Steve Almond writing on the film Ordinary People. Ig Publishing is open to unsolicited queries via e-mail at submissions@igpub.com, as Bradley continues to build the Auteur list.
Lovia Gyarkye is a writer and editor based in New York City. Her work has appeared in the Nation, the New York Times, and the Atlantic.
