Wealth & Money Quote by Keenen Ivory Wayans

Keenen Ivory Wayans is quietly dunking on an entire industry religion: the idea that bigger checks automatically buy better art. Coming from a comedian who helped mainstream a scrappy, subversive sensibility (from In Living Color to the Wayans film run), the line reads less like thrift and more like self-preservation. He is talking about budgets the way comics talk about hecklers: once you start playing to them, you lose your rhythm.

The intent is practical. Smaller budgets keep the stakes low enough to take risks, move fast, and improvise. Comedy, especially, thrives on velocity and surprise; it dies under committee meetings and “notes” designed to protect an investment. When Wayans says the big-budget mentality doesn’t suit him, he’s pointing at the cultural machinery that arrives with the money: executive oversight, brand safety, test screenings, and the slow creep of fear. “Money is the answer” is the punchline and the indictment. It’s a mindset that treats cash as a substitute for taste, story, and trust in performers.

The subtext also nods to power. For a Black comedian-director navigating Hollywood’s gatekeeping, a big budget can be a leash disguised as a gift. If the studio spends more, it owns more: the tone, the casting, the final cut, the blame. Wayans’ preference is a refusal to confuse scale with value, and a reminder that in filmmaking, constraint isn’t merely a limitation - it’s a creative weapon.