Michael Leunig Quotes

There will always be some films that the audience would like and some that they don't. But if I start becoming a slave to appreciation, I will be subjecting myself and my talent to one particular type of taste. I don't want to do that.

I don't want to sell my soul to Hollywood - to just make run-of-the-mill stuff.

Writers sometimes give up what is most strange and wonderful about their writing - soften their roughest edges - to accommodate themselves toward a group response.

It's difficult to find a movie that feels true to itself. You feel the hand of Hollywood, the moviemaking by committee, on everything.

If you start to just aim for what the audience wants to hear, you're already hamstrung because you don't have any freedom.

I have worried about getting pigeon-holed, but now I think I've done enough weird, offbeat stuff not to be. And I also know that I do things for the right reasons: I've made my money, so I don't have to say yes to anything.

The studio is spending great amounts of money, and they want some insurance they will get money back. They go for the middle of the road, broad in appeal. It's restrictive. It's a constant struggle, but if you give in, you're just making cottage cheese, and that's the end of it.

When the uncreative tell the creative what to do, it stops being art.

In America, I don't think you have the creative freedom that I'm used to. Traditionally, it's a producer's cinema here.

Hollywood seduces a person who's used to making theater, art, and having success on their own terms and then tries to squish them into a box and, eventually, throws the box out.

You can filter certain stuff - it depends what artist you are - but you're never going to be true to yourself if you're worried about what other people think.

When directors tell me they want a song like one, I tell them no song should be like another. I don't listen to directors.

Having been subjected to the pigeonholing of Hollywood myself, I realized that once you become a studio-approved director, your chances of ever making your own film again are zero. You make the films that the studio wants you to make.

Rules limit you, and once you start thinking about what the audience wants or expects, it becomes a trap that a lot of artists fall into.

In the arts, you simply cannot secure your bread and your freedom of action too. You cannot be a hostile critic of society and expect society to feed you regularly.

I'm certainly not who people think I am. I always do whatever I want to do, and my films are personal to me.

I feel like the point of being an artist is to have your own voice: to do it the way you would do it and not the way anyone else would do it. If you're a strong enough writer, then that voice is going to come out all the time, and I can't stop it from coming out, no matter what I do.

I want to make music that I like; not something that I have to make because I think it's going to sell.

Yet I never want to make a movie purely for the money.

I like to make the music that I really love. You're supposed to make your favorite music that no one else played, and I'd like to just keep it at that and not really change it at all.

If art is singular expression, then by nature, the best art is controversial. But when art stirs debate for reasons besides its artistic integrity, that's when things get bent.

I've gotten to a point where I wouldn't direct someone else's material. It would only be something totally original.

My job is to just express something that I want to express. And if I'm ahead or behind the curve, that's for others to decide.

Jay-Z is as politically correct as some of the politicians. He's safe. There's points when you're acquiring financing, you make adjustments. He's made those adjustments. It's his choice. For me, it's not a necessity.

The minute you succumb to outside pressure, you cease to be creative.