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Comic Books
"Marville does not have the stuff that makes for top-selling comics, but it does explore the origin and meaning of life, so I thought it was worth a six-issue series. And, because I'm president of Marvel, I could ignore the bean counters and publish Marville without regard for minimum sales projections and margin requirements."
— Bill Jemas, Marville #6
Web Animation
"We know what happens when the publisher shits the bed, but what about when the developer earns the displeasure of the hotel chambermaid? When they are given too much development time as opposed to too little as the publisher comforts themselves with the knowledge that even Stanley Kubrick once took 170 takes to the same scene, willfully ignoring the fact that while Stanley Kubrick was a flighty auteur genius the same behavior pattern could easily be displayed by an incompetent spod with no planning skills and an indirectly proportional ego?"
Web Original
"Given that his plot ideas for the sequel included gems like 'Spock shoots JFK', perhaps shuffling Roddenberry as far from influence as humanly possible was a shrewd decision, as the studio pushed him into a generic (and neutered) 'consultant' role."
"I imagine this was largely because Tim Burton ended every conversation with, 'F*** you, I'm Tim F***ing Burton and I can do whatever I want.'"
— Chris Sims and David Uzumeri on Batman (1989)
"Verhoeven was confident enough in Showgirls' success that he deferred 70% of his $6 million dollar directing fees in exchange for complete creative control and the ability to release the movie with an NC-17 rating. Verhoeven would receive the rest of his fee if the movie was a hit... which it was not."
— LeBeau
, "What the Hell Happened to Elizabeth Berkley?"
, "What the Hell Happened to Elizabeth Berkley?""There's a huge clue in the book The Man who Heard Voices, which is devoted to the production of Lady in the Water. The book covers, in great detail, how blown away Night is by a Disney executive who unthinkably failed to 'get' his script, and the soul-searching, sweaty-sheeted introspection about just what was wrong with other people, that they couldn't see how incredible his story was."
— Stuart Millard, "The Self-Destruction of M. Night Shyamalan"
, "The Self-Destruction of M. Night Shyamalan""I would still like to see Jennifer Lynch direct a movie without that terrible screenwriter she always drags along also coincidentally named Jennifer Lynch."
— Miles Antwiler on Surveillance (2008)
Surveillance (2008)"I remember being quite miffed after watching 90 minutes of generally badly judged television and wondering how Russell T Davies could have got it so wrong."
''"All of the higher-ups who said the show was too weird, or that not enough people watched it, or that I was more obsessed with making obscure references than I was with telling stories and, occasionally, jokes — that was ALL HORSESHIT. I never should have doubted myself. And I never will again."
"The Internet. A wondrous place, filled with all sorts of information for you to unveil. A place without restrictions, a place without limits. Once the Internet became widespread and at the reach of the common citizen, it opened window of opportunities to all the creative minds (and not so creative ones) to express themselves in thousands of unthinkable ways. This was the birth of a whole new society, a culture, that could be shared by all mankind alike… One of the ways to express yourself is webcomics. Oh, the webcomics… Meeting no standards, having no restrictions and being far from thing like laws, rules and quality control has its toll. The BAD webcomics are the price to pay for such freedom. Daily, hundreds if not thousands of aspiring people try to reach the masses through works of fiction which follow none of the guidelines that make the respectable business of printed comics what it is. Bad webcomic creators are psychologically blind to their flaws, their egos are fed by the constant stream of ass-kissing supplied by their semi-literate fans who don't know any better. It is exactly these kinds of insults to art that we are here to document."
Web Video
Yahtzee: I guess Peter Molyneux's problem is that he didn't really belong in a world with no parameters.
Gabriel: Yes, the classic problem: If you have loads of energy and infinite dreams, you need parameters.
Yahtzee: Parameters promote creativity, and with the parameters he was given in 2-D, he could make stuff like... Theme Park and Dungeon Keeper!
Gabriel: Populous!
Yahtzee: But when he was given no parameters—or near as no parameters as you can get when gaming technology developed—he was making Fable; and suddenly his role in gaming, which was to make the most of what we had, was obsolete.
Gabriel: Yes, the classic problem: If you have loads of energy and infinite dreams, you need parameters.
Yahtzee: Parameters promote creativity, and with the parameters he was given in 2-D, he could make stuff like... Theme Park and Dungeon Keeper!
Gabriel: Populous!
Yahtzee: But when he was given no parameters—or near as no parameters as you can get when gaming technology developed—he was making Fable; and suddenly his role in gaming, which was to make the most of what we had, was obsolete.
"It sounds like the person in charge of this was no one, which is why all the songs are a malformed mess."
"Listen, sir, I'm going to need you to get all the way off my back."
— The Screenwriter's Catchphrase in response to feedback, Screen Rant Pitch Meetings
"Normally, by this time in the video, I would have introduced the stuffy executive that didn't know the difference between a polygon and a pixel bursting into the office […] and ruining the game, but that apparently didn't happen with Trespasser. […] This lack of management is unfortunately something that hurt the project, because sometimes you do need another experienced set of eyes to take an objective look at what's not worth slamming your head into over and over."
"Why would you need to improve? Why would you need to get any better? Everyone just agrees with your shitty ideas because you're a Zelda."
Real Life
3) When I'm Famous, I Won't Have to Deal with Editors
This doesn't happen often. If you are lucky, it will never happen to you.
This doesn't happen often. If you are lucky, it will never happen to you.
"No one edits. I edit. I refuse to be edited."
— Harold Bloom
"There's a lot of rubbish on Satanic Majesties. Just too much time on our hands, too many drugs, no producer to tell us, 'Enough already, thank you very much, now can we just get on with this song?' Anyone let loose in the studio will produce stuff like that. There was simply too much hanging around. It's like believing everything you do is great and not having any editing."
"The great producer—how did this happen to him? He got so good at keeping the studio away, and getting his way with things, and taking the time he wanted to take, I don’t think he ever got a chance to examine what we were making."
— Paul Sylbert, production designer on Ishtar, on Warren Beatty
"This is my Metal Gear, and I can destroy it if I want to."
— Hideo Kojima on a grumpy day
"Totalitarian? The BBC? Seriously? The other day I had to BEG a meeting with [BBC1 controller] Jay Hunt, just so I could explain what we're spending all her money on in Doctor Who. She said it all sounded very nice and sent me off to play. That's more than creative freedom, that's being turned loose in the wild. Frankly, I'm scared and want someone to tell me what to do. I might even have an epiphany."
"It's my job to find potential in things that might not on the surface seem to have any, and it is their job to be skeptical and question all ideas to make sure they measure up."
"Before the public sees any syndicated cartoons, they're first screened by an editor or two for potential problems. And editors, I'm convinced, have saved my career many times by their decisions not to publish certain cartoons."
"Speaking as a freelancer, some of us have really boneheaded ideas that need to be challenged and changed."
— Neall Raemonn Price
"I discovered that editing is really another word for someone ruthlessly tearing apart your work with a big smile, all the while telling you that it will make the book so much better. And it did, though it felt like splinters of hot bamboo being driven into my tender eyeballs."
— Christopher Paolini, on the editing of Eragon
"Aw, and he was so underappreciated. He wasn't given the credit that he deserved, that he was responsible for. Nobody recognized him. You know what they're 'recognizing' now? What Vince Russo's shit looks like when he didn't have Vince McMahon standing over him saying, 'You know, those twenty-four ideas are real bullshit, but I'll take this good one."
"It's telling that when a filmmaker succeeds in running his own studio, it's because he's learned to let his inner businessman veto his inner artiste. Coppola ran Zoetrope with his heart. It nearly destroyed him. Steven Spielberg runs DreamWorks with his brain, a decision that leads to much healthier returns on investment."
"Bob just thought the Antichrist was trying to destroy his art. They were well-meaning people who wanted him to get what he deserved, which was a big commercial hit. But when it came down to the art or the money, he was with the art."
— Robert Dornhelm, on Robert Altman's insistence on editing his own films
"When you are young and unsuccessful, you suffer for art's sake. When you are old and successful, art suffers for your sake."
— Solatium
"Fame-dazzled editors often misplace their scissors at the very moment when authors most need their help."
— The Daily Telegraph, From a review of the first collection by the young poet Amanda Gorman.
