Sam Levinson Quotes

I think the job of artists is to stir things up.

To me, the only purpose in making films, in my mind, is to talk about something and go to a place that might be difficult but that can make you still think and question.

I want to put concepts in front of people that make them laugh or smile or even hate what I do. I'm not interested in just putting clothes in stores.

Without a doubt, I was born to want to make cinema, but the kind of cinema I want to make is not like commercial movies, which I enjoy myself, but I wanted to be the kind of filmmaker who wrote original work, sort of like a novelist would who deals with who we are and our times or our relationships.

I think it's really the job of the composer, the artist, the painter, the writer to present people with options. I'm just really reflecting the thoughts and actions around me.

Movies should make people uncomfortable sometimes.

I've always been inspired by Genet, Henry Miller and Hubert Selby, Jr., who taught me that you've got to tell a bigger truth in whatever you're doing, but the truth is not popular.

I've had great experiences or joyful experiences making a movie that people found very disturbing.

I don't shy from controversy. I'm telling stories, and I'll tell whatever story seems like it wants to be told.

My movies just kind of sneak up on you. I don't have to worry too much about what everybody is going to say. Anyway, I really don't pay attention to what the world says about my movies. I just care about what my buddies think.

Every artist seems to me to have the job of bearing witness to the world we live in. To some extent I think of all of us as artists, because we have voices and we are each of us unique.

I made 'True Detective' like it was going to be the only thing I ever made for television. So put in everything and the kitchen sink. Everything.

The truth is that sometimes art may not exactly reflect one's personal politics, but the story, the drama, the thing you're trying to say, might want to go in a certain direction, and while it may seem like it has resonance with things that are happening topically, you kind of want the world you're creating to have its own internal logic.

What is art? Art talks about life; it's subversive.

I never deliberately set out to shock, but when people don't walk out of my plays I think there is something wrong.

Putting something in a movie because it's in the news doesn't make it political to me. If you're not going outside the same old, same old, if you're not pushing the envelope, then you're not doing anything. A good movie is a political thing.

I think that when a film does its job, it poses questions rather than gives answers. It should act as a frustrating counselor who, at your bidding for advice, says, 'What do you think?' I think that's some of what the culture critic Greg Tate meant by art leaving a 'metaphysical stain.'

The role of art in society differs for every artist.

The function of the artist in a disturbed society is to give awareness of the universe, to ask the right questions, and to elevate the mind.

I'm not really sure what social message my art carries, if any. And I don't really want it to carry one. I'm not interested in the subject matter to try to teach society anything, or to try to better our world in any way.

I want art to make me think. In order to do that, it may piss me off, or make me uncomfortable. That promotes awareness and change, or at least some discussion.

In my opinion, the true pioneers are those artists who make manifest in their works the new content, the determining characteristics of life in our time.

Not just art for art's sake, but I want to have films out there that will provoke authentic, holistic conversations about the human condition. And not provide the easy answers, but put it out there.

I am not interested in genres. I am interested in doing the best work I can in whatever medium.

I think that's always the goal of art, is to make people ask themselves questions.