I believe entertainment can aspire to be art, and can become art, but if you set out to make art you're an idiot.
Interpretation
Entertainment can be considered art if it evolves naturally, rather than forcing it to fit the classification of art.
Steve Martin's quote highlights the distinction between entertainment and art, suggesting that while entertainment can achieve the status of art, the intention to create art itself can lead to failure. It emphasizes that genuine artistry often emerges organically rather than through deliberate effort, and that sometimes striving too hard for a label can detract from the quality of the work.
In practice
During a lecture on the evolution of art, this quote can serve to illustrate the fine line between art and entertainment.
When I first started doing my comedy act, I just desperately needed material. So I took literally everything I knew how to do on stage with me, which was juggling, magic and banjo and my little comedy routines. I always felt the audience sorta tolerated the serious musical parts while I was doing my comedy.
You want to be a bit compulsive in your art or craft or whatever you do.
I have heard it said that a complicated childhood can lead to a life in the arts. I tell you this story of my father and me to let you know I am qualified to be a comedian.
...it is not the big events that hurt the most but rather the smallest questionable shift in tone at the end of a spoken word that can plow most deeply into the heart.
Reviews for someone like me come in three packages. One is justifiable praise, the second is justifiable criticism, and the third is, "This is only published because he's a celebrity."
If he thinks he would harm Mirabelle, he would back away. But he does not yet understand when and how people are hurt. He doesn't understand the subtleties of slights and pains, that it is not the big events that hurt the most but rather the smallest questionable shift in tone at the end of a spoken word that can plow most deeply into the heart.
A movie doesn't have to do everything. A movie just has to do a couple of things. If it does those things well and gives you a cool night at the movies, an emotion, that's good enough.
She breathed deeply of the scent of decaying fiction, disintegrating history, and forgotten verse, and she observed for the first time that a room full of books smelled like dessert: a sweet snack made of figs, vanilla, glue, and cleverness.
Everything is raw material. Everything is relevant. Everything is usable. Everything feeds into my creativity. But without proper preparation, I cannot see it, retain it, and use it.
If you did not write every day, the poisons would accumulate and you would begin to die, or act crazy or both-you must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.
If you want something from an audience, you give blood to their fantasies. It's the ultimate hustle.
Architecture arouses sentiments in man. The architect's task therefore, is to make those sentiments more precise.
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