Matthew Weiner Quotes

Cinema is gambling. It is better to gamble on a unique film even if it seems like suicide.

I completely take on the risk, the poker game, which being an artist means, and I'm going to try to make a film which honestly reflects what I have in my head.

I really admire artists that are willing to take a different approach and a different angle to their shows.

Every piece of entertainment is made with the idea that 'This is going to be terrific' and 'This is the best thing I've ever done' and then it hits the public and then the public tells you whether it's good or bad.

There are two kinds of directors: There's the kind where two plus two equals four, and you have to help them figure it out. And then there's the kind that throws you in a room, locks the door, sets the house on fire and films it.

I find so much writing colourless, small in its means, unwilling to take stylistic risks. Often it goes wrong; I am not the one to judge. Sometimes, I hope, it goes right.

I am proud being an artist who takes risks, who would walk off a cliff artistically. I won't settle for commercial reasons.

The best films come about through experimentation.

It's an artist's choice to listen to criticism or not. I'm very sensitive to criticism.

I'm prepared to take risks. And every movie that I do is a risk. No one knows what the movie is going out turn out like.

You don't get many chances in life to make a movie, and if someone says they don't like it, I say, 'I do'. I've made records before, and if someone said it sucked, it bummed me out.

Show me a Scorsese film, and I'll show you a movie where he's taken risks. It's just his nature. He's an artist, and artists take risks. He always does what he believes in.

I've never really thought of myself as just an actor; I always thought of myself as aspiring to be an artist, and an artist has to take risks and put himself on the line.

I definitely think independent film is very exciting, and you get to sometimes take bigger risks. So that's always a challenge and something that I look forward to.

I'm often asked how I shoulder the responsibility of films, but I've always believed in taking risks.

I'd love to work with Kanye West. He's gone through a lot of stuff in the public eye, but his music is genius. He always takes risks.

Experimental or independent cinema is so exciting because it is about risk-taking, as there is no formula.

I like to go into things, and I like to make the most bold choice to tell the particular story being told.

I love to be in projects that take risks.

I quite like it to be risky. I'm not ready to sit down in a chair with my name on it yet. I've arrived at that point in the art world where there really is a chair that you sit in.

There are many directors in the middle range who've made mostly successful pictures, and then there are a few great directors who've had some successes and some failures. I suppose my life would be smoother if I wasn't almost totally enamored of the latter category.

A great artist has to be ready to fail.

Art is unthinkable without risk and spiritual self-sacrifice.

There's just some dysfunctionalism with artists. There are good things and bad things about being an artist, and the good thing is, sometimes you get an inside line on what's really happening. You develop these strange antennae that clue you in to what's really going on.

'Why risk?' I responded. 'It should be, why not to risk?'