A Quote by Ismail Merchant

We have gotten some terrible reviews at times but if we depended on the judgment of the studios or critics, we never would have made more than one movie. — © Ismail Merchant
We have gotten some terrible reviews at times but if we depended on the judgment of the studios or critics, we never would have made more than one movie.
If I depended on the critics' judgment and recognition, I'd never have gone into the motion-picture business.
During the course of any normal day, I usually pay more attention to assembling a grocery list than I do to reading movie reviews, although there are a more than a few film critics who bring huge insight to their work.
The critics gave me bad reviews on every movie I made.
You won't be reading reviews of the dystopian sci-fi flick Aeon Flux in the papers today because it wasn't screened for the press-and, given that it cost the GDP of a small country and that Charlize Theron and the director, Karyn Kusama, are critics' darlings, this could mean but one thing: A stinker. A weapon of mass destruction. A planet-killer. Folks, I'll never understand studios. Aeon Flux is not that terrible.
Reviews are all bullshit, because they always change. When House of 1000 Corpses came out, all the reviews were awful. It was impossible to find a review better than "The worst movie ever made." And now I'll see more-modern magazines, and sometimes they'll re-review things, and I'll read this great review for it. It's the same thing with White Zombie! People talk about "Oh, White Zombie, these classic records. Why don't you do them now?" Everyone hated those records when they came out! The reviews were terrible.
Because I don't give the studios advanced quotes or an advanced look at my reviews. I think the readers deserve to read my reviews before the studios do.
I really hate people that spoil stuff by putting scripts online. I don't mind so much people that do movie spoilers when the movie is out in the theater. If you haven't gotten there the first weekend, it's on you to not read reviews or anything. But to put up screenplay reviews just kills me.
I read the art reviews of my work. Some critics understand my art correctly, while some don't. I simply ignore the reviews written by the latter.
I've never had a movie that got great reviews. I've had movies that got different levels of good and bad reviews, but you can more or less count on plenty of bad reviews.
I've had lots of commercial success. I've also had some terrible reviews and some wonderful reviews.
Look, it's nice. I like the fact that critics liked this movie, but most of the movies that I've made, you'll find a handful of people that love it and more than a few other handfuls of people hate it. If I was invested in that, I would've given up long ago.
It's weird being an author because it's different than writing songs. You put so much more of yourself out there to be judged because it's a memoir. So when the reviews come in, they all feel really personal. Some people are just going to hate you no matter what. Personally, I never believe good reviews.
If I was one of the leaders...if I was just a leader of one of these studios what I would do is I would go to all my cohorts who run other studios and say let's make a deal. Let's each of us make three 3D movies a year or whatever the number is. Let's not take every movie and make it a 3D movie. Let's take our three tentpoles or whatever movie it is so you have a specialness to it.
There are times when you need to step back and realize that movie studios today are not necessarily the same things that they were many years ago. Many movie studios are international conglomerates now. They own everything from theme parks to toy companies to T-shirt companies to video companies. There's a lot of different wheels to be greased.
Growing up, I would watch a movie on video and would go to the back of the VHS and locate the address for Universal Pictures or MGM or whatever. I'd write to the studios asking them if I could be in a movie. They never wrote me back.
If film critics could destroy a movie, Michael Bay and Adam Sandler would be working at Starbucks. If film critics could make a movie a hit, the Dardenne brothers would be courted by every studio in town.
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