A Quote by Sam Mendes

Listen, you make a big movie, you're going into the Coliseum, and people are going to give you the thumbs up or the thumbs down. And that's part of the game. It's part of the fun as well.
Thumbs up or thumbs down on a website is not a conversation. The danger is you get into a habit of mind where politics means giving a thumbs up or thumbs down to a website. The world is a much more complex place.
I want to be a part of something, and when we define movies now based on how they do on the weekend. We live in a society of "thumbs up, thumbs down."
If you've got a shot at having some 30 million people give you thumbs up or thumbs down every week, you take it.
As a critic, I try very hard to say exactly what I think. And in a medium in which we are well-known for the binary thumbs up and thumbs down, I try to be able to give the mixed review. But most pictures fall into that middle ground, so I wrestle over which way my thumb is going to turn. It's not flip.
I don't know that anybody has walked up to me in the street or in a store or in the grocery and said to me, 'I hope you bomb Assad.' Certainly plenty have said, 'No; thumbs down, thumbs down, thumbs down.'
I used to be very vain about my thumbs. I have fat thumbs. If there's a movie where you see me on the phone, it's not my hands.
Those monkey-thumbs were meant for dogs. Give me my thumbs, you fu**ing monkeys!
Women are much more discriminating. I think both types of people are equally interested in having an attractive partner. But women essentially give the thumbs up to only half as many guys as guys giving the thumbs up to women.
Everybody is so hungry for referrals, for 'likes.' I don't need to be liked. I don't need to be liked at all. I don't care if there's a button right there at the top of Drudge saying 'like' or 'dislike,' 'thumbs up,' 'thumbs down,' it doesn't mean anything.
Our DNA is as a consumer company - for that individual customer who's voting thumbs up or thumbs down. That's who we think about. And we think that our job is to take responsibility for the complete user experience. And if it's not up to par, it's our fault, plain and simply.
I like debate and argument, so I'm usually all right with disagreement, and I'm even all right if the critic doesn't come to a clear thumbs up or thumbs down. But I need the disagreement to have some kind of line I can follow on the map. I like following an interesting mind along it.
I'm used to being part of 'Game of Thrones' and going into something where you're a small part of something else. You don't want to hold anything up because they've got such a well-oiled machine going.
My main qualm about TV criticism has been when people review TV the way they review movies. They watch the pilot, and write a definitive review of the show. The obvious analogy is that you don't read the first eight pages of a book and then talk about whether the book works or not. People want so desperately in this day and age to declare something thumbs-up or thumbs-down that they declare it immediately.
We give this practice two thumbs down!
If the film isn't suspenseful, i.e. the pressure cooker situation of what's going on in the movie, if that's not part of it, if the threat of violence and the temperature isn't always going up a notch every scene or so, then the movie is going to be boring. It's not going to work.
I've ended up as a filmmaker who really loves the movie part of movies. That time in my life was a big influence on the kind of movies that I ended up making. I always think I'm going to make a movie that's gritty and real, but then I make a movie that's like an opera. I fight it at first and then that's just the way it is.
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