"I aspire to eventually be making my living by making movies"
About this Quote
There’s a quiet audacity baked into this line: not “I want to make movies,” but “I aspire to eventually be making my living” by making them. Richard King frames filmmaking less as a romantic calling than as an economic threshold he hasn’t crossed yet. That’s the subtext most directors learn to speak fluently: the art is real, but so is rent, and legitimacy often arrives in the form of invoices paid on time.
The word “eventually” does a lot of work. It signals patience, but also a recognition of the industry’s soft gatekeeping, where access is rationed through networks, luck, and the long grind of underfunded projects. He’s not promising a breakout; he’s describing a runway. That humility reads as strategic: aspiration is socially acceptable in creative fields where certainty can come off as naïve or entitled. It’s also a subtle hedge against the volatility of directing careers, which can swing between months of prep and long stretches of nothing.
“Making my living” is the most revealing phrase, because it reframes success as sustainability. In a culture that fetishizes the “big break,” King’s intent feels closer to a labor politics of creativity: being a director shouldn’t require a trust fund or endless side jobs. The line is aspirational, yes, but also quietly critical of an ecosystem that treats unpaid hustle as a rite of passage. It’s a modest sentence that smuggles in a bigger demand: let the work be work, not just a dream.
The word “eventually” does a lot of work. It signals patience, but also a recognition of the industry’s soft gatekeeping, where access is rationed through networks, luck, and the long grind of underfunded projects. He’s not promising a breakout; he’s describing a runway. That humility reads as strategic: aspiration is socially acceptable in creative fields where certainty can come off as naïve or entitled. It’s also a subtle hedge against the volatility of directing careers, which can swing between months of prep and long stretches of nothing.
“Making my living” is the most revealing phrase, because it reframes success as sustainability. In a culture that fetishizes the “big break,” King’s intent feels closer to a labor politics of creativity: being a director shouldn’t require a trust fund or endless side jobs. The line is aspirational, yes, but also quietly critical of an ecosystem that treats unpaid hustle as a rite of passage. It’s a modest sentence that smuggles in a bigger demand: let the work be work, not just a dream.
Quote Details
| Topic | Movie |
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