David Kipen asks: Who’s really responsible for Hollywood’s best movies?

In an edgy and funny manifesto, critic David Kipen says au contraire to that old film school theory—the auteur theory—that gives all the credit to the director.

Instead, in honor of “the mother tongue of America’s first screenwriters,” Kipen uses the Yiddish word for “writer” to coin The Schreiber Theory, which decrees that knowing who wrote a movie is often a far better guide to knowing whether the movie will be any good or not.

Kipen’s new heresy topples the old orthodoxy by studying the careers of screenwriters past and present in a witty, two-pronged attack: In part one, he dismantles the auteur theory and presents a convincing argument that screenwriters are the guiding creative geniuses behind the best films. In part two, he offers a compendium of mini-biographies of great screenwriters past and present. Who wrote Casablanca? Who wrote Twelve Monkeys? Who wrote Dead Girls Don’t Tango? What else did they write?

It all makes The Schreiber Theory an engaging read and a one-of-a-kind reference for movie lovers and film students alike.