Daily Inspiration Quote by Jay Roach

Roach is doing the polite, industry-savvy version of a flex: quality rises when everyone knows everyone’s watching. On the surface, he’s talking about “those things” as if the medium (TV? streaming series? prestige comedy?) is too obvious to name. That vagueness is strategic. It lets him praise a broader ecosystem without stepping on any specific platform, rival, or collaborator.

The intent is both communal and self-protective. “Influencing each other” casts competition as creative cross-pollination, a comforting story Hollywood tells itself when market pressures are actually doing a lot of the steering. Roach’s real point is about audiences: there used to be the film-geek gatekeepers and then “the overall film consuming population,” and now the second group has adopted some of the first group’s expectations. That shift is a cultural power transfer. Taste isn’t confined to the art-house crowd; it’s been mainstreamed by streaming access, social media discourse, and a prestige arms race that turns “quality” into a brand feature.

The subtext is mildly anxious: if general audiences have developed cinephile standards, you can’t coast on familiarity, star power, or formula. “Better and better and better” isn’t just enthusiasm; it’s escalation, the treadmill of constant improvement in an attention economy. Roach, a director who’s moved between broad comedy and political dramatization, is implicitly arguing for seriousness of craft even in mass entertainment. He’s staking a claim that the crowd has become sophisticated enough to reward it.