Making a film that's supposed to be fun to watch is really hard - that's the weird irony of it.
Interpretation
Creating enjoyable films is surprisingly challenging, highlighting a unique irony in filmmaking.
This quote by Steven Soderbergh reflects the paradoxical nature of filmmaking, where the aim of producing an entertaining film can often lead to greater complexity and difficulty. It suggests that despite the intentions of making something fun and enjoyable, the process involves significant challenges and artistic struggles that can make the outcome less than straightforward.
In practice
During a film festival discussion, I could use this quote to highlight the challenges directors face.
If you talk to any filmmaker, and if you said to them, 'I guarantee you x amount of money per month for the rest of your life, and it's not a big amount of money, but I can also guarantee that you will work continually, you will get to make what you want to make,' any filmmaker on the planet will make that kind of deal. I would have made it.
When people say that moviegoing is dead, I go, 'OK, so the makers of 'Get Out' should've sold that movie to a platform? Then they don't have this insane, crazy success theatrically all over the world.'
I want to thank anyone who spends part of their day creating...anybody who spends part of their day sharing their experience with us-I think this world would be unlivable without art and I thank you.
Cinema is not about format, and it's not about venue. Cinema is an approach. Cinema is a state of mind on the part of the filmmaker. I've seen commercials that have cinema in them, and I've seen Oscar-winning movies that don't. I'm fine with this.
A success, to me, is the ability to keep working. That's success. It has nothing to do with money; it's the ability to keep getting things made, period.
You don't go make 'Schizopolis' if you're trying to protect some idea of yourself as a filmmaker.
The painter must give a completely free rein to any feeling or sensations he may have and reject nothing to which he is naturally drawn.
Seek for the boldest color possible, content is irrelevant.
An opera begins long before the curtain goes up and ends long after it has come down. It starts in my imagination, it becomes my life, and it stays part of my life long after I've left the opera house.
It is only framed in space that beauty blooms; only in space are events, and objects and people unique and significant and therefore beautiful.
You shall create beauty not to excite the senses but to give sustenance to the soul.
Experience was my only teacher; I knew little of the modern art movement. When I first saw the works of the Impressionists, van Gogh, van Dongen, and Fauves, I admired it. But I had to seek the true way alone.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.