Marlon Brando picture

nterview with James Grissom, 1990

"If you are really an artist, if you really care about what you do as an actor or a writer or a director--or anything--prepare to either sabotage your standards--which is to say yourself--or spend all of your time enraged because the business, the industry, does not care about art or how good things are: They only care about movement and money, which is to say: How fast is the money coming in? How much interest or heat is there on this product? And you are, and you remain, that product. Most give in to this and become a one-note parody of what they might have been, because they just want to work, to be seen, to be famous. If you persist in wanting to do good work, you become a massive pain in the ass, yelling and demanding that things be better. This is the life. You are seeking to gain entrance to a rotting ghost ship on the shore of an island where, many miles inland, there is good work being done, but you're stuck on the ship with the hungry rats who are grateful just to be there, because it is about all they deserve."-- Marlon Brando