Daily Inspiration Quote by John Frankenheimer

Frankenheimer isn’t just griping about too many cooks; he’s diagnosing a modern disease of big-budget filmmaking: authority diluted into committee. The line is blunt on purpose. “Experts” sounds flattering - a promise of rigor, safety, and polish - but in his mouth it’s a quiet warning label. The more specialized the advisors (market researchers, brand consultants, franchise “lore” keepers, VFX supervisors, legal, PR), the more the director becomes an air-traffic controller for other people’s priorities rather than the author of a coherent vision.

The intent is practical and political. Frankenheimer came up in an era when directors were expected to make hard calls on set, under pressure, with imperfect information. His films (from The Manchurian Candidate to Seconds) carry a kind of controlled paranoia; they’re built on tone and point of view. Those are precisely the first casualties when decision-making migrates to panels of “expertise” whose incentives aren’t aesthetic unity but risk management: avoid offending, avoid failing, avoid surprise.

The subtext is also about accountability. A director with control can be wrong, but the work has a spine. Add experts and you get plausible deniability: if a film turns bland, no single person “did” it. Frankenheimer’s jab lands because it exposes how expertise can become a bureaucratic alibi, turning filmmaking from decisive storytelling into consensus engineering.