Creativity Quote by Ray Manzarek

Manzarek’s line has the punch of someone who came up in a world where sound and image were learning to flirt in public. Calling movies “very important” is almost comically understated; the real move is the second sentence, which stakes a claim. Not rock, not jazz, not the novel: film is the century’s signature medium. Coming from The Doors’ keyboardist, it reads less like a neutral observation than a quiet realignment of cultural hierarchy.

The intent is partly historical and partly personal. Manzarek grew up in the postwar explosion of Hollywood, television, and mass advertising, then helped invent a band whose entire aesthetic was cinematic: noir organ lines, widescreen drama, a frontman performing like a dangerous leading man. In that sense, he’s acknowledging the upstream influence. Rock in the 1960s didn’t just borrow from blues; it borrowed from editing, close-ups, and narrative swagger. Pop stardom itself becomes a kind of film grammar.

The subtext is also about power. Movies weren’t merely “art”; they were an industrial megaphone that standardized desire, rebellion, beauty, violence, and aspiration for millions at once. When Manzarek crowns film as the 20th century’s art-form, he’s pointing to the medium that best fused technology with mythology - and quietly admitting that every modern performer, musicians included, has been acting in its shadow.