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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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