Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art; it is the part the schools cannot recognize.
Movies are so rarely great art that if we cannot appreciate great trash we have very little reason to be interested in them.
The first prerogative of an artist in any medium is to make a fool of himself.
If there is any test that can be applied to movies, it’s that the good ones never make you feel virtuous.
When a picture can’t make it on its own, the producers pull in a ‘controversial’ message – the way a couple whose marriage is falling apart decide to have a baby.
The critical task is necessarily comparative, and younger people do not truly know what is new.
What this generation was bred to at television’s knees was not wisdom, but cynicism.
Where there is a will, there is a way. If there is a chance in a million that you can do something, anything, to keep what you want from ending, do it. Pry the door open or, if need be, wedge your foot in that door and keep it open.
A mistake in judgment isn’t fatal, but too much anxiety about judgment is.
Moviegoers like to believe that those they have made stars are great actors. People used to say that Gary Cooper was a fine actor probably because when they looked in his face they were ready to give him their power of attorney.
For some strange reason we don’t go to charming, light movies anymore. People expect a movie to be heavy and turgid, like “American Beauty.” We’ve become a heavy-handed society.
The problem with a popular art form is that those who want something more are in a hopeless minority compared with the millions who are always seeing it for the first time, or for the reassurance and gratification of seeing the conventions fulfilled again.
One of the surest signs of the Philistine is his reverence for the superior tastes of those who put him down.