Nicholas Meyer Quotes

For every wacky postcard, there's a million people waiting to buy it, and for every $10 million of those things, there's one Rembrandt. Purposely, I think I want to aim at doing something that a lot of people won't like. I'm just worried that it looks like I've compared my work with Rembrandt. "Gervais says he's better than Rembrandt!".

I don't believe that you can judge the worth of a movie in the atmosphere in which it comes out the first time. There's just so many reasons why some pictures don't catch on.

There's a difference between watching a film and watching a bit of cinema and enjoying a film as a piece of cinema.

I believe if you come out of a movie and the first thing you say is, 'The cinematography was beautiful,' it's a bad movie.

I always ask, 'Is this movie essential? Does this movie need to exist? Does it need to exist right now?' And the answer to that is almost always no.

If it's a good movie, it's a good movie. I don't care about the genres.

I don't judge cinema on its box-office success.

Reviewers are entitled to say if they liked the screenplay, performance, and execution of a film or not. But when they say things like the film doesn't cater to a certain audience, it leaves people wondering if they should watch it.

I'm not a massive fan of 3D. I've seen some good 3D, and I've seen quite a lot of bad 3D. I think if a film is created for the shock effect of 3D, then it's a certain type of film that I'm not massively bothered about.

To me, All About Steve movie is sweet-natured and sweet-hearted, and I can't get enough sweet-hearted movies. I want to be inspired right now. I think things are pretty tough in the world. And people at the première were loving it - I mean, loving it! So I'm so sorry to hear people saying that it is the worst movie of 2009. I don't buy it at all.

When a film is reviled, you open a film and people say "Oh, it's the stupidest thing, it's the worst movie." You think: oh, nobody's going to ever speak to you again. But, it doesn't happen. Nobody cares. You know, they read it and they say "Oh, they hated your film." You care, at the time. But they don't. Nobody else cares.

If people are reacting to films based on their degree of success or failure, then they're not really looking at the movie. I don't really care about that. Everyone's entitled to an opinion, but at least base your opinion on the merit of the work itself.

It's not that everything needs to have substance, but when nothing does then you know we're living in a bankrupt society, an artistically bankrupt society, and that's not okay. I think there's room for forms of entertainment that are very light and frivolous and fun, but when those forms of entertainment, forms of "art" if you will, become presented as something more than that, and are believed to be something more than that, then we've got a lot of problems.

I usually don't mind movies that people think go overboard because that's what art is all about. Art is about pushing us and making us examine ourselves.

Art is difficult. It's not entertainment. There are only a few people who can say something about art - it's very restricted. When I see a new artist I give myself a lot of time to reflect and decide whether it's art or not. Buying art is not understanding art.

People have very specific opinions of comedy. Slapstick was an art form in the '20s and the lowest form of show business in the '50s. Who's right, who's wrong? Who's an idiot, who's not?

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.

Like I say, it depends on how you do rock-'n'-roll. If you do it right then I think people will appreciate it for what it is.

I think the movies that don't try to please people are movies that you respect more in the end.

People have misconceptions about Marilyn Manson, of course, but they can think what they want.

Why do you necessarily have to be wrong just because a few million people think you are?

You must not become a mere peddler of words. The thing to learn is to know what people are thinking about, not what they say.

The press tend to stick with that the people don't care about foreign policy in their daily lives and aren't concerned about it and so on and so forth. I don't think that's actually true.

There’s no “correct path” to becoming a real artist. You might think you’ll gain legitimacy by going to university, getting published, getting signed to a record label. But it’s all bullshit, and it’s all in your head. You’re an artist when you say you are. And you’re a good artist when you make somebody else experience or feel something deep or unexpected.

Watteau is no less an artist for having painted a fascia board while Sainsbury's is no less effective a business for producing advertisements which entertain and educate instead of condescending and exploiting.