A play, after all, is a mystery. There's no narration. And as soon as there's no narration, it's open to interpretation. It must be interpreted. You don't have a choice... Each play can become many things.
Mike NicholsRead
You want to make money, remake 'Cinderella.' You want to move people, remake the Hippolytus and Phaedra myth.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Art can be a powerful tool for both commercial success and emotional impact.
In this quote, Mike Nichols suggests that while certain stories, like 'Cinderella,' are commercially successful and appealing due to their universal themes and familiar structures, other narratives, such as the myth of Hippolytus and Phaedra, may resonate deeply on an emotional or philosophical level. By highlighting the distinction between making money and moving people, he emphasizes the dual power of storytelling in art, where one can achieve both commercial viability and profound emotional connection.
Themes
MoneyArtStorytellingMythEmotional Impact
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a presentation about the impact of storytelling in cinema.
More from Mike Nichols
All quotes →There’s nothing better than discovering, to your own astonishment, what you’re meant to do. It’s like falling in love.
Mike NicholsRead
You could say that it's in talking movies that inner life begins to appear. You can see things happen to the faces of people that were neither planned nor rehearsed.
Mike NicholsRead
The thing about being an outsider... is that it teaches you to hear what people are thinking because you're constantly looking for the people who just don't give a damn.
Mike NicholsRead
I've learned that many of the worst things lead to the best things, that no great thing is achieved without a couple of bad, bad things on the way to them, and that the bad things that happen to you bring, in some cases, the good things.
Mike NicholsRead
Plays, especially great plays, yield their secrets over a long period of time. You can't read it three times and say, 'OK, I got it. I know what's happening.'
Mike NicholsRead
Similar quotes
I think good-looking people seldom make good television. And American television studios almost concede before they start: 'Well, it won't be good, but at least it'll be good-looking. We'll have nice-looking girls in tight shirts with F.B.I. badges and fit-looking guys with lots of hair gel vaulting over things.'
Hugh LaurieRead
I don't care if it's a mystery story, a Western, or the story of Julius Caesar. To me it's the emotion, the lies, the double-cross, whether it's Brutus doing it to Caesar or Bob Stack doing it to Robert Ryan that defines what kind of drama it is.
Samuel FullerRead
I never said the camera was truth. It is, however, a more accurate and more objective way of seeing.
Chuck CloseRead
Perfumes are the feelings of flowers.
Heinrich HeineRead
Japanese chefs believe our soul goes into our knives once we start using them. You wouldn't put your soul in a dishwasher!
Masaharu MorimotoRead
If you don't know what to play, play nothing.
Miles DavisRead