Dylan McDermott Quotes

Times change; Hollywood is not the same as it was when I first entered the business. It felt to me like it was starting to narrow down and centralize itself around what would... make money.

Why should you have to atone for making big movies?

You are treated like a cog in a machine. The director might be obsessing so much with the stunts that he doesn't notice your performance, and the producer may just be an insane money man, but I have no snobbery about the movies.

For me, money has never been an indicator. And it is very sad that each and every film these days is being judged by the money that it makes. It's a world that I don't want to be a part of, and I try and stay away from that.

My good films were independent and my bad films were not.

I honestly think I could sit down and write a show tonight that the critics would love, and I know it would be canceled within four weeks. I know what the critics love. We write and produce for people, not for critics.

I think in Europe, movies are made like a commodity and then sold as art.

There's a few movies I wanted to do, and I didn't get to do them partly because they wanted me to be part of the horse and pony show, getting the money, and I'm just not doing that. There's a few movies that people wanted me to do, but they were too safe.

I'd like to do interesting indie films mixed with big, high-paying commercial blockbusters. 'One for you, one for me,' is what they say.

The only reason why I would like to be accepted? Because if your movies don't do well, after a while you don't get to make any more movies.

Film is different for me now. If the money is good and it's not totally revolting, I'll do it.

I'm not a driven businessman, but a driven artist. I never think about money. Beautiful things make money.

It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it.

Marketing has supplanted story as the primary force behind the worthiness of making a film, and that's a very sad thing. It's film only as a function of consumerism rather than as an important component of our culture, and that's everywhere around the world.

So I'm in that half-hour business where the most money is, so that eventually I feel like the people that put on the Dupont show, like maybe my artistic effort is going to be a little different.

Hip-hop don't have no fresh energy, none at all. It's money driven, everybody tryin' to make that cheque, nobody putting art in their albums any more.

There's always been an ongoing struggle between commerce and art.

I just love movies, so suddenly, you're political about movies, and that's dark. It's just not fun when something you love becomes calculated.

The studio is spending great amounts of money, and they want some insurance they will get money back. They go for the middle of the road, broad in appeal. It's restrictive. It's a constant struggle, but if you give in, you're just making cottage cheese, and that's the end of it.

Whereas money is a means to an end for a filmmaker, to the corporate mind money is the end. Right now, I think independent film is very confused, because there's excess pressure in the marketplace for entertainment to pay off.

I'd much rather be worrying about playing that note in tune, and picking out the best way to arrange the song, rather than thinking about pricing for the download. It's not art.

Capitalists work hard to produce what consumers want. Artists who work too hard to produce what consumers want are often accused of selling out. Thus, even the languages of capitalism and art conflict: a firm that has 'sold out' has succeeded, but an artist that has 'sold out' has failed.

When the business starts shaping the art, or the delivery of the art, then it's not right.

I became producer so that I could work with persons like him and to rock the world of Hong Kong Cinema a bit.

You have to be in movies that make money to be offered work. Basically that's the equation. There's no real way around that. That said, you don't ever make decisions solely for that reason.