Creative Hierarchy Quotes

If photography is allowed to stand in for art in some of its functions it will soon supplant or corrupt it completely thanks to the natural support it will find in the stupidity of the multitude. It must return to its real task, which is to be the servant of the sciences and the arts, but the very humble servant, like printing and shorthand which have neither created nor supplanted literature.

Being the director - way fancier than 'just' being the writer. People call you 'talent.'

I know when it comes to TV, the writer is king, but to me, the filmmaker is king.

What has always been at the heart of film making was the value of a script. It was really the writer who could make or break a film. But as we all know, the writer has always been at the bottom of the creative heap.

The whole thrust of theatre is different, just because the writing is so much more respected in a play. Whereas in movies - and having been the writer, I can say from experience - the writer is lower down on the food chain.

Some actors, I think, want to feel that they are as creative as the writer. And the answer is, frankly, they're not.

No matter how big a name you are, how many big series you've been in or how good looking you are, in the end, all actors are secondary to the writer.

Every man will be a poet if he can; otherwise a philosopher or man of science. This proves the superiority of the poet.

Somebody asked Somerset Maugham about his place in the pantheon of writers, and he said, "I'm in the very front row of the second rate." I'm sort of haunted by that.

Michael Bennett, Tommy Tune and Agnes de Mille fought to be director-choreographers. They were just not going to do it any other way because the choreographer is so often at the bottom of the creative totem pole when you put a show together. So with that power you get a more direct point-of-view and that helps something called style.

In theatre, there's the director, the writer, and below them the actor. In film, it's the actors who are most important. That goes against the grain for me.

I am of the opinion that there are artists and non-artists. I think that this is the way it always was and always will be. I do not believe that we are in the center of the world. It is possible that there are gods who do not relate to human. As an artist, I believe that it is possible to depict these forces.

A novelist's sense that he or she is 'above' a certain genre mainly comes out of the notion that the genre is somehow a debased version of his or her preferred form.

Comics have a caste system - an editor has to act in a certain way, an artist has to be humble.

I was telling somebody just the other day, there's technically such a hierarchy in this business. You have film, that's the ideal; then you have TV, and things like web series do not claim as much cred, but the fact is, if the material is solid and I believe and trust in the team that's involved, I don't care what format it is.

Musicians are at the bottom of the creative pyramid and authors are at the top, and many people think it's unacceptable for someone to attempt to jump from the bottom to the top of the pyramid.