In Hollywood, they think they know it all. You, as a writer, are essentially an outsider. Novelists and short-story writers, especially.
Interpretation
Writers often feel like outsiders in the film industry, despite its perceptions of knowledge and creativity.
Ray Bradbury suggests that in Hollywood, there is a prevailing arrogance among filmmakers who believe they possess all the answers. This creates a barrier for writers, particularly novelists and short-story creators, who find themselves on the fringes of this culture, struggling to produce their work in an environment that doesn't fully appreciate their art or their unique perspective.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the struggles of writers in the film industry.
I've written about 2,000 short stories; I've only published 300 and I feel I'm still learning. Any man who keeps working is not a failure. He may not be a great writer, but if he applies the old fashioned virtues of hard, constant labor, he'll eventually make some kind of career for himself as a writer. Ray Bradbury, 1967 interview (Doing the Math - that means for every story he sold, he wrote six "un-publishable" ones. Keep typing!)
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Movies become living organisms that graduate from a filmmaker's sphere of influence and pretty much look back and tell you how they need to be said goodbye to. A movie often turns around and looks at you and says, "Here is who I am, and that's maybe now how you see me, but that's who I've become." And you've got to be open enough to go with that.
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For me, the original play becomes an historical document: This is where I was when I wrote it, and I have to move on now to something else.
Every good composition is above all a work of abstraction. All good painters know this. But the painter cannot dispense with subjects altogether without his work suffering impoverishment.
I think that literature is something that embraces a much larger experience than politics. It's an expression of what is life, of what are all the dimensions of life. But politics is one among others.
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