6th July 2016 | for Creatives | artist integrity, writing, reaching your audience, Ricky Gervais, protect the art, filmmaking, TV writing, value the art |
"As an artist, you want as many people to see your work as possible with no compromise. .... I don't want to .... have it watered down, and follow a soap opera, and have all the edges filed down and have someone interfere. .... Delivering the exact thing that I made ... that's so important to me, you know, that's, I said, the ideal of the most beautiful and purest thing. And it's how little it can be ruined from your brain to the observer. And that's the way you do everything yourself, really, because, you know, I've probably only produced and directed to protect my writing, the idea, you know?"
"As long as I can get exactly what's in my head with minimum compromise, I don't care where it's going. I don't care if, in five years' time, they've discovered telepathy, that I can just have ideas and blink and people get them all around the world. You know, we don't know what the medium's going to be, so I'll have whatever delivers the purest idea that I have to the most people."
"We know in our deep and private places that we have a responsibility to take on things that draw our attention and to turn them into these mysterious objects—poems and stories—that illuminate, that offer an objection to the status quo, that warn and empower."
"There are plenty of places that are built on the business model of exploiting writers by not paying them. Are you going to let them do that to you?"
"You've got to protect your voice and your vision from everybody, really. Even the best-intentioned editors. And I mean, I love my editor; I've been with Vicky Wilson for over 35 years. She's wonderful, and her remarks on the finished manuscript are always terrific. But I don't go to her to discuss a germinating idea."
"There's no upside to holding back plot. .... If you've got a great idea, that great idea doesn't wait until season two. It goes in the third act. You can keep inventing more plot, but you can't invent more audience. You have to have the faith in yourself... that there will be another good idea."
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