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Daily Inspiration Quote by Barry Sonnenfeld

"It felt scary because there was no auditioning, no rehearsing"

About this Quote

That little list of absences - no auditioning, no rehearsing - reads like a confession from someone who knows Hollywood runs on controlled risk. Barry Sonnenfeld isn’t romanticizing spontaneity; he’s naming the thing the industry quietly fears: a set where process can’t act as a safety net. Auditions and rehearsals are less about art than insurance. They generate proof that choices were tested, that failure would be a surprise rather than negligence. Strip them away and you’re left with naked accountability.

The line works because it’s built on negation. Sonnenfeld doesn’t say what they did have - vision, instinct, momentum - because those are harder to justify in a business culture obsessed with receipts. Instead, he frames the moment in terms of missing rituals, the bureaucratic comforts that make creativity feel legitimate. The fear isn’t only aesthetic; it’s social and professional. If it goes badly, there’s no paper trail of due diligence, no pre-emptive scapegoats, no buffer between the decision-maker and the outcome.

Coming from a producer, the subtext sharpens: this is the voice of someone tasked with turning uncertainty into a schedule and a budget. It hints at a production operating on intuition, relationships, or urgency - the kind of leap that can produce a signature, electric result or a headline-grabbing disaster. The scariness is the price of immediacy, and Sonnenfeld’s candor acknowledges how rare that freedom is in a system designed to sand down exactly these edges.

Quote Details

TopicFear
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APA Style (7th ed.)
Sonnenfeld, Barry. (n.d.). It felt scary because there was no auditioning, no rehearsing. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/it-felt-scary-because-there-was-no-auditioning-no-100864/

Chicago Style
Sonnenfeld, Barry. "It felt scary because there was no auditioning, no rehearsing." FixQuotes. Accessed February 3, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/it-felt-scary-because-there-was-no-auditioning-no-100864/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"It felt scary because there was no auditioning, no rehearsing." FixQuotes, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/it-felt-scary-because-there-was-no-auditioning-no-100864/. Accessed 3 Feb. 2026.

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It felt scary because there was no auditioning, no rehearsing
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About the Author

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Barry Sonnenfeld (born April 1, 1953) is a Producer from USA.

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