Death of the author and Interpretation

Well, I'd have to take the genuineness of the artist into consideration (I'm looking at you Hirst!)  but mostly I'll agree that a piece means what its creator says it does, unless they don't specify that or they leave it open to interpretation. There is a certain amount of agreeing that once you put a piece of your work into circulation then you lose some control over it but it's still yours, so deliberately ignoring the creator's intent is suspect.

I'm not going to say one way or the other because I know it'll come back to bite me on the butt, but I'd say that Death of the Author is an inevitable part of discussing media. Time plays a large factor in that.

Is The Philadelphia Story a tale about a woman tamed by her ex-husband or is it about Tracy Lord finding out that the persona she's built up for herself (as indestructible and unapproachably inhuman) isn't what she actually wants? Is the Witch from Into the Woods an evil character for cursing the Butcher's house or simply pragmatic in her attempts to rectify her Mother's curse? Is Prisoner No. 6 actually the man known as John Drake or are the two wholly unrelated?

I will always take the artist's viewpoint into account. The artist always has an intent for what has happened in their work and should always be the second opinion consulted as to the meaning of what they're saying. The first should always be the art because sometimes it says things that the artist doesn't always like or agree with.

I almost totally agree with you: I'm totally with the idea of the author being the Word of God, however, are we talking OT, NT, Talmud or Qu'ran?  

Usually the artist has a pretty good handle on everything that they're expressing because they do like to consider as many angles as they can and explore as many aspects of an idea before finally considering a work as complete as they are likely to get it. However, an artist can change their mind or disagree with the final product.

Which version of Star Wars: A New Hope is the author's correct version? Is it the first cinematic release which was just called "Star Wars," the updated version which was subtitled "Part IV A New Hope," or the 1997 "Special Edition"? Because each version changes the intent of the story in some way: the first is a complete story, the second is a part of a greater whole and the third changes the personality of some characters (Han not shooting first being the most obvious).

When Thomas Hardy updated the Wessex novels for a new edition in 1912 and changed some place names and made some grammatical changes to create a more uniform vision was he saying that he was wrong in his original versions? I know that it didn't change the meanings or themes of the novels but he did alter the form of his novels slightly. Does that make him or his original books wrong?

Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series has two sets of fans: ones that like the monster-hunting Blake of the first few books and those that like the more "adult" tones of the later books. Which is the truer reflection of the character?

Ray Bradbury dismayed many fans when he said that many people's interpretation of Fahrenheit 451 was wrong despite the book supporting either idea (I'm more with Mr Badbury on this one)

In Stephen King's "unexpurgated" The Stand, is the "original" version the correct text, or is it the first-published version? He insists that the "unedited" version is best but I find it a bit less cohesive than the "original."

I'm not saying that either one of us is wrong or right but, to clarify my original post, the author is the second-best authority on the text because sometimes their feelings or ideas will change about something (J. K. Rowling on whether or not Hermione should have wound up with Ron or Harry, Dumbledore being gay for example) whereas the text has only - usually - the one version of itself and its ideas to express. And the amateur actor in me will always rely on the text first and the author second.

Art, ALL art is a dialogue between artist and audience.
So the artists intent is as important, to the dialogue, as what the audience takes away - however to the artist obviously thrir intent is more important, as as for the audience what they take away is more important.

The work should stand by itself. If the author/artist genuinely NEEDS to explain their intent then that is a flaw in the work.
The author\artist's intent is relevent when judging the artist\author. The author\artist is not responsible for every interpretation that every member of the audience chooses to place on it.
On the other hand, the time and place in which the work originated should be considered a key detail in understanding it - though ideally it should work within the audience's frame of reference. How much to compromise the two and which to favour is a subjective matter to be decided by the audience on a case-by-case basis.

And I would say "John Drake" was a literal character while "Number 6" was a metaphoric charactyer making them distinctly different (and there is no rule that if the same actor plays similar characters then they must be the same character) - to make the two characters one-and-the-same you would need an explanation for the final episode of The Prisoner - the only one that comes to mind would be something like the Danger Man episode "The Ubiquitous Mr Lovegrove"