HAPPY NEW YEAR / JOHN CASSAVETTES
Posted
in
Filmmakers
with tags
Artists,
Censorship,
Filmmakers,
John Cassavettes
on
12/31/2007 5:31:00 PM by
Rob Barnett
Went to a friend's Facebook this morning and found ideas to share - Adria Petty is a filmmaker (www.AdriaPetty.com) - she quoted filmmaker John Cassavettes - wise words to ring in a new year:
"you have to fight every day to stop censoring yourself. and you never have anyone else to blame when you do. what happens to artists is that it's not that somebody's standing in their way, it's that their own selves are standing in their way. the compromise really isn't how or what you do, the techniques you use, or even the content, but really the compromise is beginning to feel a lack of confidence in your innermost thoughts. and if you don't put these innermost thoughts on the screen then you are looking down on not only your audience but the people you work with, and that's what makes so many people working out there unhappy. these innermost thoughts become less and less a part of you and once you lose them then you don't have anything else. so many people have so much to say and there are so many really worthwhile things to say that it seems impossible that we could cut ourselves off from this whole avenue of enormous excitement."
The quote inspired me to find more:
"...in no other activity can a man express himself as fully as in art. And, in all times, the artist has been honored and paid for revealing his opinion of life. The artist is an irreplaceable figure in our society too: A man who can speak his own mind, who can reveal and educate, who can stimulate or appease and in every sense communicate with fellow human beings. To have this privilege of world-wide communication in a world so incapable of understanding, and ignore its possibilities, and accept a compromise--most certainly will and should lead the artist and his films to oblivion."
More John Cassavettes: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001023/
Happy New Year!
Rob