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.
When I was born, the doctor looked at my mother and said, "Congratulations, you have an actor!"
If there were only one truth, you couldn't paint a hundred canvases on the same theme.
You can't work in the movies. Movies are all about lighting. Very few filmmakers will concentrate on the story. You get very little rehearsal time, so anything you do onscreen is a kind of speed painting.
That which is not slightly distorted lacks sensible appeal; from which it follows that irregularity β that is to say, the unexpected, surprise and astonishment, are a essential part and characteristic of beauty.
We usually evaluate creative process in terms of how much feeling or thinking was behind the work or how well the work was done. Isn't there any other way of appreciating the process? What if the standard of excellence was how fully present the artist was during the process?
The art is not one of forgetting but letting go. And when everything else is gone, you can be rich in loss.
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