A Quote by Nick Hornby
I can't stand it when writers moan about what film-makers might do or have done to their books. There's a very simple answer: don't take the money.
Related Quotes
It's a waste of time to think about what I should have done and what I didn't. I really believe in that. That's how I react to the if-onlys of life. To moan and groan about something I shouldn't have done, could have done, might have done...who knows? It is what it is. You got what you got. I live my life one day at a time.
We might make a public moan in the newspapers about the decay of conscience, but in private conversation, no matter what crimes a man may have committed or how cynically he may have debased his talent or his friends, variations on the answer Yes, but I did it for the money, satisfy all but the most tiresome objections.
There's an internal coherence and logic to what they get from [Rush] Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and the rest of these guys. And they sound very convincing, they're very self-confident, and they have an answer to everything - a crazy answer, but it's an answer. And it's our fault if that goes on. So one thing to be done is don't ridicule these people, join them, and talk about their real grievances and give them a sensible answer, like, "Take over your factories."
If African film makers had one-tenth the amount commanded by film makers the world over - even the amount used by so-called shoestring film makers - I think we would see quite an explosion of African films on the world scene.
Without writers fooling themselves about what their books might accomplish there would be no books at all.
I think it would be very good if writers and artists take a stand in electoral politics. They've got the ability to put words together that might reach the ears of the people of the city who vote.
Let film-makers take a call about what films they want to do.
My experience is that books take on a life of their own and create their own energy. I've represented books that have been sold for very little money and gone on to great glory, and I've seen books sold for an enormous amount of money published to very little response.
I've met writers who wanted to be writers from the age of six, but I certainly had no feelings like that. It was only in the Philippines when I was about 15 that I started reading books by very contemporary writers of the Beatnik generation.
What might the world look like if we took some chances on the film-makers we might be afraid of?
Film-makers in Belgium are seen as arts and crafts makers. It is a small country. There is not really a film industry there at all.
Unfortunately writers take a very small part of the profit on their books, and I think in the e-book world there is a real danger they will take even less, unless they are vigilant and robust about protecting their own interests.
The more important point, however, is not about what the money does. It's about what has to be done to get the money. The effect of the money might be (democratically) benign. But what is done to secure that money is not necessarily benign. To miss this point is to betray the Robin Hood fallacy: the fact that the loot was distributed justly doesn't excuse the means taken to secure it.
At the time I left film school there wasn't a lot of hope for young film-makers. It was a calling card of film school to be quite slick and commercial, which might lead to getting some stuff on telly.
When I was in my 20s, I was out of control in terms of what I would do to defend my vision. There are black film-makers and storytellers who take a back seat to just get it done. It's good, but it's not right there. It's been compromised.
In the 1970s, a lot of critics didn't understand video. I got a lot of bad reviews. But film-makers didn't understand what we were doing, either. There were actual fistfights between film-makers and video-makers. I was witness to one.
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