If the tension between artistic work and the market`s logic hunted art in general, since the beginning of mass culture in mid nineteen century, it became present in films since its birth: beyond the dimension of work of art, with the invention of the spectacle of projection, films became a largely consumed product which imposed industry production methods and commercial goals. In contemporary days, the decay of utopia and the expansion of the market`s hole as a cultural mediator have put the modern esthetic paradigm in question, including its ideal of autonomy. Far from the radical postures that used to proclaim the confrontation with the massive, contemporary art develops ways of resistance that negotiate the possibility of expression with its undeniable condition of merchandise. Our goal, in this research, is to analyze how the tension between the ideal of artistic freedom and the film as a product happens in contemporary cinema. Therefore, we sought to select, as our object of study, films that allow us to perceive negotiation strategies between artistic creation and production methods. We chose Being John Malkovich (1999), Adaptation (2002), Human Nature (2001) and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004). The first two had been directed by Spike Jonze, the last two had been directed by Michel Gondry and all of them had been written by Charlie Kaufman.