The Business' has been an editorial success, with a core audience that loves it. But commercially it has never been a success as a newspaper. It just gets crowded out on a Sunday.
If a book about failures doesn't sell, is it a success?
People will say a movie bombed at the box office but I couldn't care less.
When 'Destroyer' was first released, we got a strong backlash from our hardcore fans. After six months, the album was dead in the water. The critics didn't think much of it, either.
'Course, 'Santini' bombed in England, y'know. It came out at the height of the New Wave, which couldn't have been a worse time for a solo singer trying to sell rock melodies.
If you plan to miss this movie, better miss it quickly; I doubt if it'll be around to miss for long.
No one really gets rich doing this. A couple people do, Black Sabbath does. We don't sell any records anymore.
As any student of literature knows, the books that last are often not the books that are most popular when they are written. Both 'Moby Dick' and 'The Great Gatsby' were complete failures, critically and commercially, when they first appeared.
'Karzzz' was a mistake.
One of the obvious things that went wrong with Multics as a commercial success was just that it was sort of over-engineered in a sense. There was just too much in it.
I've made some movies that I really loved that nobody saw.
When you do a record like 'Talk,' and you're happy with it, and it reaches your ambitions and then doesn't sell as well as you wanted, it kind of takes the wind out of your sails a little.
You're out of business!
But thankfully, my first album, 'Wide Screen,' was sort of a critics' darling - everyone raved about it, but no one bought it. They only manufactured 10,000 copies; I wasn't even in the running for failure!
'I Wanna Hold Your Hand' and 'Used Cars' were absolute failures at the box office. Complete disasters. I learned some sad news: it's not an automatic thing that, if you make a good movie, everyone wants to see it.
'Paul's Boutique' was a bust, right? That was a bummer. We didn't pause on it for a long time - we didn't go through therapy - but it was weird. And because it was a bust, we didn't go on tour.
'One Part Lullaby.' It was our big major-label record. People reference it quite a bit, but it did absolutely nothing. It's like the 'Kids' soundtrack. It did nothing. It didn't start anything for me.
Our first record, 'Huey Lewis And The News', was seen by no one - it sold 25 copies.
I've been able to make some wonderful films, but sometimes you make films with great passion - great belief - and these films slightly don't work at the box office, and they become your favorite films.
I do feel bad when my films don't do well, but I respect audiences' verdict because they know well which films to support. If they don't like a film, we should accept it.
I basically never believed that I was a commercial actor. Just because of the outcome of many auditions over time. No one hired me.
'All Our Yesterdays' was unquestionably the best work I have ever done. And the reading public stayed away in droves.
My first two books did nada. I ended up paying the publishers.
I'd hate to see any film I'm involved in fail, especially artistically but also business-wise.
I have no issues if audiences don't like a film or a performance, and the film doesn't do well. My problem is when they say that the film was good and performances were excellent, but the film didn't run. I have a problem when that happens.
