Daily Inspiration Quote by Barry Sonnenfeld

There is a certain Hollywood swagger in Sonnenfeld's admission, but it lands less like bravado than like boundary-setting. "For the best part of 10 years" is doing the heavy lifting: it frames his detachment as disciplined habit, not a one-off snub. The line positions reviews as noise - not because he thinks he's above criticism, but because he's choosing the only leverage a filmmaker reliably has: attention.

The subtext is a quiet indictment of how criticism and publicity have fused. Reviews used to be a verdict; now they're also content, churned into hot takes, aggregates, and outrage bait that can hijack the conversation around a movie before audiences even see it. By refusing to read them, Sonnenfeld sidesteps the emotional whiplash of a career measured in public scorekeeping. It's a protective strategy for someone whose work lives at the intersection of commerce and taste, where a "fresh" or "rotten" consensus can feel like fate.

Context matters, too. Sonnenfeld came up as a cinematographer and became a director-producer associated with big, broad studio films - the kind that critics often treat as disposable even when they're culturally sticky. Not reading reviews becomes a way to stay loyal to the actual job: making something that plays. There's also a hint of pragmatism: feedback arrives anyway, filtered through collaborators, box office, the next greenlight. He isn't rejecting evaluation; he's rejecting the idea that strangers should get a vote inside his head while he's still trying to make the next thing.