"I think every director has a different take, some are good, some are bad. The directors you get on best with sometimes don't make the best films, so who's to say who is right"
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Roth’s line reads like a shrug, but it’s the kind that’s earned. Coming from an actor who’s worked with auteur-gods and workmanlike pros alike, it’s a quiet rebuke to the fantasy that filmmaking is a clean meritocracy where the “best” people simply rise. He’s pointing at the messy truth: taste is unstable, sets are political ecosystems, and the thing that feels healthiest in the room doesn’t always translate to the screen.
The sharpest move is the separation of chemistry from outcome. “The directors you get on best with” suggests a humane baseline - respect, ease, shared language. Then he undercuts the comforting assumption that good process guarantees good product. That’s not cynicism; it’s professionalism. Film history is full of harmonious productions that land with a thud, and famously bruising shoots that somehow yield lightning. Roth is naming the uncomfortable gap between collaboration as lived experience and art as received artifact.
The final “so who’s to say who is right” isn’t relativism so much as a refusal to let any single authority - director, critic, awards body, Twitter consensus - claim moral ownership of “quality.” It’s also an actor’s defense of ambiguity: performers are often asked to validate a hierarchy they don’t control, then blamed when results disappoint. Roth ducks the simplistic scoreboard. His subtext: you can chase alignment, you can chase excellence, but the medium won’t reward your virtues consistently, and anyone pretending otherwise is selling a myth.
The sharpest move is the separation of chemistry from outcome. “The directors you get on best with” suggests a humane baseline - respect, ease, shared language. Then he undercuts the comforting assumption that good process guarantees good product. That’s not cynicism; it’s professionalism. Film history is full of harmonious productions that land with a thud, and famously bruising shoots that somehow yield lightning. Roth is naming the uncomfortable gap between collaboration as lived experience and art as received artifact.
The final “so who’s to say who is right” isn’t relativism so much as a refusal to let any single authority - director, critic, awards body, Twitter consensus - claim moral ownership of “quality.” It’s also an actor’s defense of ambiguity: performers are often asked to validate a hierarchy they don’t control, then blamed when results disappoint. Roth ducks the simplistic scoreboard. His subtext: you can chase alignment, you can chase excellence, but the medium won’t reward your virtues consistently, and anyone pretending otherwise is selling a myth.
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| Topic | Movie |
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