I never got into making documentaries for any kind of success, because documentary careers are generally ones of prolonged failures.
Morgan NevilleRead
I always tell aspiring documentary filmmakers, 'You have to go into it because you love it; if you go into it for the money, you're an idiot.' The number one prerequisite is you have to be intensely curious. If you love learning and trying to make people figure out what makes people tick, it's the best job in the world.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Pursuing documentary filmmaking should stem from passion and curiosity rather than financial gain.
Morgan Neville emphasizes the importance of love and curiosity in the field of documentary filmmaking. He warns that those who seek this path primarily for monetary rewards are misguided, as the true essence of the craft lies in a genuine desire to explore and understand the complexities of human nature.
Themes
DocumentaryFilmmakingPassionCuriosityLearning
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech at a film school graduation, this quote can inspire new filmmakers to follow their passion.
More from Morgan Neville
All quotes →When you come to documentaries, the stakes are too low for it to be cutthroat. You're all doing it for the right reasons.
Morgan NevilleRead
There was no model how to make a documentary production company work. I figured it out as I went along.
Morgan NevilleRead
Similar quotes
I've returned to being an amateur without any ties or strings attached, which gives me a freedom I never had before.
Cat StevensRead
In a photo, you just do a click, but in art you have to put in so much energy. This concentration of energy and attention says something that other media cannot say.
Fernando BoteroRead
It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.
Pablo PicassoRead
In a machine age, dressmaking is one of the last refuges of the human, the personal, the inimitable.
Christian DiorRead
In fiction, imaginary people become realer to us than any named celebrity glimpsed in a series of rumored events, whose causes and subtler ramifications must remain in the dark. An invented figure like Anna Karenina or Emma Bovary emerges fully into the light of understanding, which brings with it identification, sympathy and pity.
John UpdikeRead
The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art - and, by analogy, our own experience - more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.
Susan SontagRead