I never got into making documentaries for any kind of success, because documentary careers are generally ones of prolonged failures.
Interpretation
The pursuit of creating documentaries often involves enduring setbacks rather than seeking immediate success.
Morgan Neville's quote highlights the challenging nature of documentary filmmaking, where individuals often face numerous obstacles and failures before achieving any form of recognition or success. It emphasizes the importance of passion and perseverance in creative endeavors, suggesting that the journey itself is more significant than the accolades that may eventually come.
In practice
Using this quote in a film school presentation to discuss the realities of pursuing a career in documentary filmmaking.
I always tell aspiring documentary filmmakers, 'You have to go into it because you love it; if you go into it for the money, you're an idiot.' The number one prerequisite is you have to be intensely curious. If you love learning and trying to make people figure out what makes people tick, it's the best job in the world.
When you come to documentaries, the stakes are too low for it to be cutthroat. You're all doing it for the right reasons.
There was no model how to make a documentary production company work. I figured it out as I went along.
Music is a proud, temperamental mistress. Give her the time and attention she deserves, and she is yours. Slight her and there will come a day when you call and she will not answer. So I began sleeping less to give her the time she needed.
Paris is a place where, for me, just walking down a street that I've never been down before is like going to a movie or something. Just wandering the city is entertainment.
Write because you love the art and the discipline, not because you're looking to sell something.
It can certainly happen that characters in more sophisticated stories can 'take over' as they develop and change the author's original ideas. Well, it certainly happens to me at times.
Poems come from ordinary experiences and objects, I think. Out of memory - a dress I lent my daughter on her way back to college; a newspaper photograph of war; a breast self-exam; the tooth fairy; Calvinist parents who beat up their children; a gesture of love; seeing oneself naked over age 50 in a set of bright hotel bathroom mirrors.
The ideal artist is he who knows everything, feels everything, experiences everything, and retains his experience in a spirit of wonder and feeds upon it with creative lust.
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