"First and foremost, you have to make the movie for yourself. And that's not to say, to hell with everyone else, but what else have you got to go on but your own taste and judgment?"
About this Quote
Ramis is smuggling a hard truth into a friendly piece of advice: the only workable compass in a chaotic, committee-driven business is your own taste. Coming from an actor-writer-director who lived inside the studio system, the line reads less like auteur posturing and more like survival strategy. Film sets are crowded with incentives that have nothing to do with what lands on screen: financiers hedging risk, executives chasing “four-quadrant” fantasies, actors managing image, audiences imagined through spreadsheets. Against that noise, “make the movie for yourself” isn’t narcissism; it’s a way to keep the work legible.
The neat rhetorical move is the quick self-correction: “not to say, to hell with everyone else.” Ramis anticipates the common accusation that personal vision equals indifference to the audience. He defuses it, then pivots to the real point: you can’t actually create by polling. Even the most commercial comedy still requires someone to choose a rhythm, a tone, a line reading, a cut. Those decisions can’t be crowdsourced in the moment; they come from an internal meter built out of experience, failures, and whatever makes you laugh when no one’s watching.
There’s also a quiet ethic here. “Taste and judgment” implies responsibility, not whim. Ramis isn’t selling the myth of the lone genius; he’s arguing for accountability: if the movie fails, at least it failed honestly, with a clear authorial fingerprint. In an industry that loves plausible deniability, that’s almost rebellious.
The neat rhetorical move is the quick self-correction: “not to say, to hell with everyone else.” Ramis anticipates the common accusation that personal vision equals indifference to the audience. He defuses it, then pivots to the real point: you can’t actually create by polling. Even the most commercial comedy still requires someone to choose a rhythm, a tone, a line reading, a cut. Those decisions can’t be crowdsourced in the moment; they come from an internal meter built out of experience, failures, and whatever makes you laugh when no one’s watching.
There’s also a quiet ethic here. “Taste and judgment” implies responsibility, not whim. Ramis isn’t selling the myth of the lone genius; he’s arguing for accountability: if the movie fails, at least it failed honestly, with a clear authorial fingerprint. In an industry that loves plausible deniability, that’s almost rebellious.
Quote Details
| Topic | Movie |
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