Inspiration, Quote Matthew McDonald Inspiration, Quote Matthew McDonald

Quality or Quantity

The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot — albeit a perfect one — to get an “A”. Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work — and learning from their mistakes — the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

Kottke

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Interesting, Inspiration Matthew McDonald Interesting, Inspiration Matthew McDonald

David Fincher’s Impossible Eye

Another close friend is the filmmaker Steven Soderbergh, who told me about visiting Fincher during postproduction on his 2002 thriller, “Panic Room.” Soderbergh described the scene this way: “David had a laser pointer out, and he was circling this one section of a wall in the upper part of the frame, saying, ‘That’s a quarter of a stop too bright.’ I had to leave the room. I had to go outside and take some deep breaths, because I thought, Oh, my God — to see like that? All the time? Everywhere? I wouldn’t be able to do it.”

So detail oriented.

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Quote, Inspiration Matthew McDonald Quote, Inspiration Matthew McDonald

Jonah Hill on taste

You know what, the one thing in common with all of it is? Taste. If you like my acting, you like my taste. If you like my directing, you like my taste. And if you like how I dress, you like my taste.

So I might fail. But clearly the curation of this stuff is the through-line, right? So if you can curate a movie and all the music and shots and actors and clothes and everything, and you curate how you dress and people write about it? You could probably create and curate your own stuff.

link

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Quote, Inspiration Matthew McDonald Quote, Inspiration Matthew McDonald

Sick in the Head

All the quotes I saved from this book.

“People ask me about improv, and I tell them improv is just the final icing. You need a structure. It’s like, if you’re going to commit suicide, you need the building to jump out of.”

    • Albert Brooks

“But you learn more from fucking up than you do from success, unfortunately. And failure, if you don’t let it defeat you, is what fuels your future success.”

    • Chris Rock

“You allow the actor to be, as opposed to do. People are fascinating , they don’t really need to do much.”

    • Gary Shandling

“It’s Lena’s show, and we’re all there to help her. Some weeks she may love our ideas, she may love our whole script. Other weeks, we’re just trying to feed her so she gets excited and goes off and writes a script without us.”

    • Judd Apatow

“I feel comfortable in the process, but when it’s over, I don’t actually get — I enjoying being in the middle, working toward something, because there’s a feeling of safety. I feel like I’m doing something.

    • Judd Apatow

“Every day there’s a surprise, something you didn’t expect. And that’s the joy of making movies.”

    • Mike Nicols (this applies well to advertising)

“If you always want less, in words as well as things, you’ll do well as a writer.”

    • Jerry Seinfeld 

“If I go into the morning meeting and I have clarity, and I can articulate that clarity, everybody’s day is easier. If that doesn’t happen, it’s my fault.”

    • Jon Stewart

“Especially cancer. I’ve always found cancer an amusing weapon — I’ve always found, ah, anything that creates tension, tension and release, and cancer creates major tension.”

    • Michael O’Donoghue

“If somebody’s going to give me money to make a movie, I’m going to be very collaborative with them and listen to their concerns, but it’s also my job to protect the idea of the film because, without that, we’re all lost.”

    • Spike Jonze

“When I finished Her, I thought, Okay, I’ve done everything I can to give this as much love as I could give it and now it’s gonna go off and be what it’s gonna be. If it gets moved I’ll be proud and if gets hated it’ll hurt, but I also know that what I have done with my friends and collaborators will never change.”

    • Spike Jonze

“You have to see the world differently than the audience does.” Like you have to put yourself in a state where you see the world differently than the audience does, because then you will surprise them with your choices. 

    • Stephen Colbert

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