Wesley Morris Quotes

When you make a film, you like to run it with an audience. They tell you you're narrow-minded or subjective, or that seems too long, or that doesn't work.

You need an audience to help you figure out what's working and what's worth putting on your album or your special - or even just what's worth touring with.

I love test screenings. Some directors don't, I know. But I love it. I think it's because I come from the theatre and in the theatre, previews are where you really have to listen to the audience and really feel how they're responding. I found our test screenings incredibly useful.

I like test screenings. I like to see a movie with an audience of strangers. I think it tells you a lot.

I have my problems with 'Singles'. To me, 'Singles' is the least successful of the movies I've been lucky enough to make.

I get a lot of inspiration from the audience feedback to our live shows.

I'm gonna see 'Mission Impossible' Part 9 because I like Tom Cruise movies! But just because the box office has that one receipt from the ticket I purchased, doesn't mean it represents someone who liked it.

It's important to see how people see your work and how they feel about it. I know a lot of directors who are like, 'I never read reviews,' and I'm like, 'Yeah I can tell.'

When it comes to the ratings, I don't know what the rating system is. So when it comes to me, I've learned, with the little experience that I have, that when I feel really good about a movie in the editing room, it works. And when I've felt like a movie wasn't working, it didn't work.

A key part of the process for me is having screenings: not official test screenings, just gatherings of people, some I know and some I don't. We ask what is working and what isn't. So it's not as if I'm shutting out input.

I've never even watched one of my films since they're completed.

There is no good or bad cinema, there are films that connect either less or more with audience.

I need an audience to look at what I've done so I can understand it, so I can step back and watch them respond and figure out what they're understanding about what I'm trying to do and what they're confused about.

You learn quite a bit about your film from test screening audiences.

Sometimes I go to a test screening and look at the audience in line, and I start to go, "Okay, I bet this is going to work, and this isn't going to work." It's weird, but just going and facing the music and putting it out before a crowd, even before it starts playing, that exercise of putting it up on a screen for people makes you realize things even before it starts rolling. It's really weird. I've heard other people say that, too.

I don't ever see movies by myself. I always see them with other people because I want to know what works. I want to know where they laugh. I want to know where they don't laugh. I want to know what they think about it afterwards because in the end that's what the art that I'm working with is.

I think the purpose of test screenings is different for the studio and for the filmmaker. For the studio, I think they want to know whether the film works or not.

That's how I am as a director - if somebody does a really good take, I can't help it, I'm not even aware of it. Actors really, really need positive reinforcement.

When you do a film, you start to get the character, and then it disappears for a year before it's released and you get feedback.

When you put a movie together, you're continually screening it for yourself and you're screening it for other people. It's like a video game power meter. When the power bar starts going down, you've gotta look at what's going on.

There have been times when I've written something and it goes out and it comes back in a letter from some kid as to what they think about it and I've taken their analysis to heart so much that I have taken up his thing. Writing what my audience is telling me to write.

There's always gonna be criticisms, no matter what movie you do, no matter what. You can't please everybody, and it doesn't matter what the genre is. There's always gonna be a positive to a negative comment.

I embrace the criticism, because ultimately (it means) the masses have seen it [my movie]. I embrace it for my father's story, for my mother's story, for my auntie, for my grandmother, who all got their teeth knocked out so I could be [where I am].

Architects everywhere have recognized the need of ... a tool which may be put in the hands of creators of form, with the simple aim ... of making the bad difficult and the good easy.

As an actor, you're just brought on to fill one role, so it's nice to see what the entire journey is like. As much as I'd be allowed to do it, I would do it. I love it.