That's what author Ray Bradbury found out. And he didn't particularly like it when others began telling him what his stories meant. Or what they should mean...
The occasion was an assembly at UCLA where Bradbury was asked to speak. When the students began to insist that his book, the famed Fahrenheit 451, is about government censorship, Bradbury just got up and walked out.
Anyone in creative work deals with interpretation. What does the shark represent in Jaws? What about the feather in Forrest Gump? Or the fact that To Kill a Mockingbird was filmed in black and white?
Bradbury's reaction to those students was basically to dismiss the reader's interpretation. (Or at least dismiss such interpretations when the readers are so egotistical to insist to the author's face what the author meant, when said author denies trying to convey that message.)
The question is, can someone get something out of a movie that the filmmaker didn't intend? Well, it's done all the time. Probably because different things don't always mean the same to everybody. Director Spike Lee is often quoted as saying: "A lot of times you get credit for stuff in your movies you didn't intend to be there."
That just the way things are.
[Photo by pcorreia]
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