Hilton Als Quotes

I'll put it to you like this: You can only go as mainstream as people will let you go.

So must the writer, whose productions should Take with the vulgar, be of vulgar mould.

There's a difference between a pop star and an artist. Pop stars have to be perfect all the time; an artist is allowed, on occasion, to suck. And I put myself in that category because I sometimes suck. I'm not trying to please the masses. It's not going to happen, so I don't try.

If the script is right, I'm not above doing a movie with broad appeal.

For some critics we might be uncool on account of our popularity.

I don't want to be 'box-office girl,' but I don't want to be 'that indie girl' either.

I will do as I usually do. Tomorrow is going to be a day like any other day.

I don't feel I'm making a conscious effort to go more commercial.

Any time you're stepping out on a limb as an artist, it's scary, especially when you have a lot of success. When you're reaching a lot of people, the masses, it's easy to stay in that niche, you know? Especially when you're making a lot of money and you know there's a formula, it's easy to stay in that rut.

There are movies whose feel-good sentiments and slick craft annoy me so deeply that I know they will become box-office successes or top prizewinners. I call this internal mechanism my Built-In Hit Detector.

You're not going to reinvent the wheel every time you go out, because that would disappoint the audience.

I'm mainstream.

Every time something happens, whether I've won the most or lost the most, there's always 'oldest' tied to it. It's not a surprise anymore.

Being mainstream is fun.

One has to create music with mass appeal and not something which is niche. With niche music, you will only go a small distance.

We never said we were hard-core or that we didn't want our music crossing over or being popular.

You always wonder what's going to happen in a Brock Lesnar match, but if you see Brock every week, it's not as special.

'Push It,' to me, was very pop. And back then, you were called 'sell-out' to be pop.

Everybody wants to go see the big hit [at the theatre]. Not because it's any good. Because it's the big hit and everybody wants to be able to talk about the big hit.

When she is older she will see in these resemblances a regrettable uniformity among individuals (they all stop at the same spots to kiss, have the same tastes in clothing, flatter a woman with the same metaphor) and a tedious monotony among events (they are all just an endless repetition of the same one); but in her adolescence she welcomes these coincidences as miraculous and she is avid to decipher their meanings.

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.

Sometimes the intention is to shock us. But what is shocking first time around is boring and vacuous when repeated.

I think [Hollywood] has achieved everything they’ve always dreamed of. The audience now seems to be very dumb. They pay money to watch the same film. Now, you could argue, that's because it makes them feel comfortable. When they go to a movie now, it's almost like hearing a pop song. You know the rhythms, you know when the downbeat is going to come, you know when the explosion is going to come… And so as life becomes more complex, as the economy is in trouble, people cling to what makes them comfortable, so they go again and again to see the same movie.

Popularity has become its own justification.

When people go to the theater, people say they want something different, but what they really want is something the same with slight permutations. To really not know what is going to happen next is a hard thing.