Trust the tale not the teller

A point of frequent contention between Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo. Mark strongly subscribes to the "death of the author" theory that just because someone is responsible for creating a work, it doesn't mean they know what it is about. Classic example - the fear of Communism that is widely seen as the subtext of Invasion Of The Bodysnatchers came as a complete surprise to its original author Jack Finney. But just because Finney didn't consciously put it in doesn't mean it isn't there.

Often Mark points out that just because an actor is in a particular film, it doesn't mean they know what it is about. Willem Defoe, for example, didn't think that Lars von Trier's Antichrist was about mysogyny.

Simon, on the other hand, prefers to trust that the author knows what they're trying to write. And to be fair, he is a successful author himself.