While I like the idea of 'sanity cops', don't forget that we have the benefit of hindsight. Having worked on film sets, I have some idea of the problems involved in tinkering with anything once shooting has started, and some grasp of how something that seemed fine on paper might not survive contact with actors, effects, etc.
I also know a few 'sanity cop' horror stories. Sanity cops are mostly assigned to prevent films going over budget, which often means stopping shooting before anyone can go into overtime rather than telling George Lucas how many tons of Jar-Jar Binks merchandising are going to end up as landfill.
Michael Cimino was assigned a 'sanity cop' once Heaven's Gate went over budget, but she drank the magic kool-aid once she arrived on location and started sleeping with the director.
'Sanity cops' tried tightening the screws Titanic when it went hideously over budget, but Cameron spent his own money and managed to finish the film. IIRC, he was left with little money for publicity for the film, so he used the publicity money for the soundtrack album instead. Granted, I wouldn't have minded at all if the film had sunk without trace, but it was ridiculously successful at the box office and the Oscars, which I'm sure impresses the studio more than any review I could offer.
Similarly, while any good sanity cop would have told Lucas in pre-production that his ideas for Episode 1 were an atrocity inside an abomination wrapped in a catastrophe, the film made a shipload of money because we went to see it, some of us more than once, and never asked for a refund! Some of us even bought the DVD and other merchandising! (I'm proud to say that I'm not one of them - paying for it once was more than enough).
There's an interesting piece by Harlan Ellison in An Edge in my Voice on how the auteur theory has given incompetent directors too much power and enabled them to ruin good scripts, and I agree this is unfortunate... but even Harlan admitted that there were some true auteurs, directors who had earned that sort of clout... and sadly, I suspect this can only be decided by hindsight, or the box office. So it goes.
Re: George Lucas' leash
I also know a few 'sanity cop' horror stories. Sanity cops are mostly assigned to prevent films going over budget, which often means stopping shooting before anyone can go into overtime rather than telling George Lucas how many tons of Jar-Jar Binks merchandising are going to end up as landfill.
Michael Cimino was assigned a 'sanity cop' once Heaven's Gate went over budget, but she drank the magic kool-aid once she arrived on location and started sleeping with the director.
'Sanity cops' tried tightening the screws Titanic when it went hideously over budget, but Cameron spent his own money and managed to finish the film. IIRC, he was left with little money for publicity for the film, so he used the publicity money for the soundtrack album instead. Granted, I wouldn't have minded at all if the film had sunk without trace, but it was ridiculously successful at the box office and the Oscars, which I'm sure impresses the studio more than any review I could offer.
Similarly, while any good sanity cop would have told Lucas in pre-production that his ideas for Episode 1 were an atrocity inside an abomination wrapped in a catastrophe, the film made a shipload of money because we went to see it, some of us more than once, and never asked for a refund! Some of us even bought the DVD and other merchandising! (I'm proud to say that I'm not one of them - paying for it once was more than enough).
There's an interesting piece by Harlan Ellison in An Edge in my Voice on how the auteur theory has given incompetent directors too much power and enabled them to ruin good scripts, and I agree this is unfortunate... but even Harlan admitted that there were some true auteurs, directors who had earned that sort of clout... and sadly, I suspect this can only be decided by hindsight, or the box office. So it goes.