"I am not stopped by low funds, physical exhaustion, mental exhaustion, or temptations to stop and work on some other production that would be more financially rewarding"
About this Quote
Stubbornness gets romanticized in the arts, but Richard King frames it as a practical ethic: a refusal to let the usual pressure points rewrite the work. The line is structured like a gauntlet of common failure modes - money, body, mind, distraction - and the repetition does what a good director does on set: it blocks the scene. Each obstacle is placed in front of him and then silently walked through. It’s not bravado so much as a statement about attention. The real enemy here isn’t poverty or fatigue; it’s the seductive alternative project, the “more financially rewarding” detour that offers relief, validation, and a clean exit from risk.
That last clause is the tell. By naming temptation instead of merely hardship, King admits how creativity actually derails in contemporary production culture. The industry rarely drags you off your passion project at gunpoint; it nudges you toward gigs that pay faster, credit louder, and punish you less for caring. His vow rejects that logic. It’s a defense of continuity in a fragmented economy where directors are expected to be entrepreneurial, pliable, and endlessly available.
The subtext is also disciplinary: he’s signaling to collaborators, funders, and himself that the project’s value isn’t reducible to market reward. In a world that constantly asks artists to justify their time, King’s sentence becomes a kind of contract: the work will be finished not because it’s easy, but because quitting has been removed as an option.
That last clause is the tell. By naming temptation instead of merely hardship, King admits how creativity actually derails in contemporary production culture. The industry rarely drags you off your passion project at gunpoint; it nudges you toward gigs that pay faster, credit louder, and punish you less for caring. His vow rejects that logic. It’s a defense of continuity in a fragmented economy where directors are expected to be entrepreneurial, pliable, and endlessly available.
The subtext is also disciplinary: he’s signaling to collaborators, funders, and himself that the project’s value isn’t reducible to market reward. In a world that constantly asks artists to justify their time, King’s sentence becomes a kind of contract: the work will be finished not because it’s easy, but because quitting has been removed as an option.
Quote Details
| Topic | Perseverance |
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