Success Quote by Julie Taymor

Taymor is quietly throwing shade at the safest version of “professionalism”: the one that prizes competence over discovery. As a director who’s made a career out of marrying the high-art and the high-stakes (Titus, the Broadway spectacle of The Lion King, the polarizing Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark), she’s not romanticizing failure so much as treating it as a necessary cost of making work that has a pulse. “Not interesting” is the dagger here. She doesn’t say “not good,” or “not successful.” She says boring.

The specific intent is part pep talk, part aesthetic manifesto. Taymor is telling artists to stop confusing polish with purpose. Challenging yourself isn’t framed as self-improvement; it’s framed as the only reliable path to originality. The “risk failing” clause is the admissions ticket: if the outcome is guaranteed, the work is likely following a template, and templates don’t surprise anyone - including the people making them.

The subtext is also about power. In film and theater, especially at Taymor’s level, risk is expensive and public; failure isn’t a private bruise, it’s a headline, a budget meeting, a reputational scar. By insisting that interest requires that danger, she’s arguing against an industry that constantly nudges artists toward “proven” IP and repeatable formulas. Her line is a defense of ambition with teeth: if you want art that feels alive, you have to accept the possibility it might die onstage.