Guillermo del Toro Quotes

I have an issue with the commercial aspect of moviemaking: I don't see why a movie can't make a lot of money and also be good.

I have cut four albums so far, and all of them have been trendsetters and commercially successful. I believe that once you start taking art in commercial terms, it ceases to be art.

I never want to record something that I'm not proud of just because I think it might be a big hit. There's no positive about that because if you record a song you hate and it's a big hit, then you're singing a song every night that you hate. And if you record a song that you hate and it isn't a hit, then you sold out for no reason.

My entire approach is built on the idea that things can be commercial and artistic.

An artist in 2014 who is thinking about album sales is either sadly deluded or has to make so many commercial compromises that it sort of takes the joy out of making music.

I think no matter what you do, a certain amount of people are going to call you a sellout, somehow, you know. If I ever start trying to make a living on it.

Maybe that's where the new art comes in - to somehow have your eye on the marketplace and harness your art to come up with something you can be proud of creatively.

Everyone wants to be liked, so of course you want critical acclaim. After that, box office acclaim isn't bad. More than anything I think you have to try and make something you're proud of.

It's tough to make a good movie. I think the bigger the movies are, the worse they are. A lot of big movies make a lot of money and you kind of forget about what they are and they don't really make you think.

The thing that's important for me to focus on is the balancing of the tension between satisfying myself and satisfying an audience, and making something that I think is good and funny, worthwhile, small-"i" important, versus something that's going to do well.

Because many of the films I've made have had an intellectualedge, it's harder for me to lie. It's harder for me to go to peoplewith money and say I don't care about art, all I care about iscommerce; all I really want to do is make money.

You have to resist falling in love with the money they [producers] want to give you. You have to really resist that, and you have to just think about the work and whether it's a movie that you would want to see.

It cannot be emphasized too strongly that art, as such, does not "pay," to use an American expression - at least, not in the beginning - and that the art that has to pay its own way is apt to become vitiated and cheap.

I’m not producing movies to make money

People always make this totally artificial distinction between what is commercial and what is good. They quote that maxim "Nobody ever lost money underestimating the public's taste" and I think that's very wrongheaded. I like to believe the audience is actually intelligent, because it's made up of other people like yourself.

I think the moment you try to make a movie for kids, you make garbage.

I think subjectivity plays into everything. It's unavoidable; you couldn't avoid it if you tried. I think, potentially, a lot more commercial movies, it seems to be that the people making the films are trying to elicit the same reaction. I think a lot of the most interesting work in art and in films are often kind of polarized opinions and affect people in very different ways, which may be less successful commercially, but they elicit a dialogue that's quite interesting.

Some of the wealthy collectors have paid lots of money for artwork that I already did, but I didn't do it with the intention of catering to them. I think part of the reason my work is attractive to people like that is because it doesn't cater to them.

What's the level of compromise for making that kind of money? How far do I have to sell my soul? What's the price of that? And I don't know if I want to make those kind of compromises any more. I think I'm a different person. I think I've matured to a great extent. I think that I want different things now. That it's not about the celebrity status that you receive because you're doing the next hot movie. It's about doing good work.

To me, more importantly, I want to make films that I believe in, that I find value in that I think folks will like.

It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks about what's "too much" what's "enough" or if you're telling the "right" stories, just do good work.

The independent films are really where I kind of come from and where I feel comfortable. It's never been about the blockbusters and making a huge tonne of money. It's always been about wanting to do projects about the things that I think are important to be out there.

I've found through experience that I'm only good when I'm writing something that, in essence, only I could write. The times I've written for hire, for other people, I don't think I've done very well.

I'm trying to sign up and do movies that I'll be proud of it. That's kind of how I think about it.

I stand by the Lost finale. It's the story that we wanted to tell, and we told it. No excuses. No apologies. I look back on it as fondly as I look back on the process of writing the whole show. And while I'll always care what you think, I can't be a slave to it anymore. Here's why: I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And I was really … I was alive.