"I don't try to guess what a million people will like. It's hard enough to know what I like"
About this Quote
Huston’s line is a neat little rebuke to the fantasy that mass taste is a knowable algorithm. Coming from a director who moved fluidly between studio assignments and personal obsessions, it’s less a shrug than a philosophy: the only honest compass in a noisy industry is your own appetite, because anything else is theater.
The intent is practical. Filmmaking is already a committee sport - producers, stars, censors, budgets, distribution. Add “predict the audience” to that pile and you’ve created a recipe for timid, lowest-common-denominator work. Huston frames self-knowledge as the hardest job, which is also the joke: people who claim to “give audiences what they want” often don’t even know what they want, they’re just repeating last quarter’s success in a slightly different key.
The subtext is a defense of risk. When Huston says it’s hard enough to know what he likes, he’s admitting uncertainty and taste as something earned, not possessed. That humility reads as confidence because it refuses the standard Hollywood bluff - the pitchman certainty that the public is a single creature with a single appetite.
Context matters: Huston’s career is full of films that don’t flatter the idea of audience comfort. They’re often about greed, failure, obsession, moral drift. The quote works because it treats artistry not as a heroic calling but as basic honesty: if you’re going to gamble with millions of dollars and two hours of people’s attention, at least don’t lie about whose desire is steering the ship.
The intent is practical. Filmmaking is already a committee sport - producers, stars, censors, budgets, distribution. Add “predict the audience” to that pile and you’ve created a recipe for timid, lowest-common-denominator work. Huston frames self-knowledge as the hardest job, which is also the joke: people who claim to “give audiences what they want” often don’t even know what they want, they’re just repeating last quarter’s success in a slightly different key.
The subtext is a defense of risk. When Huston says it’s hard enough to know what he likes, he’s admitting uncertainty and taste as something earned, not possessed. That humility reads as confidence because it refuses the standard Hollywood bluff - the pitchman certainty that the public is a single creature with a single appetite.
Context matters: Huston’s career is full of films that don’t flatter the idea of audience comfort. They’re often about greed, failure, obsession, moral drift. The quote works because it treats artistry not as a heroic calling but as basic honesty: if you’re going to gamble with millions of dollars and two hours of people’s attention, at least don’t lie about whose desire is steering the ship.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
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