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Politics & Power Quote by Yahoo Serious

"The American formula things are out there but they don't have any stories to tell - we have all the stories to tell - but they're all formula"

About this Quote

It lands like a punchline and a lament at the same time: America has the machinery, the spectacle, the “things,” but not the narrative soul; Australia (or the outsider’s imagination) has stories, yet keeps pouring them into pre-molded shapes. Coming from Yahoo Serious, a filmmaker who broke out by spoofing Hollywood scale with scrappy antipodean cheek (Young Einstein), the line reads as both critique and self-implication. He’s not just sneering at Los Angeles; he’s describing the gravitational pull it exerts on everyone who wants a global audience.

The phrasing matters. “Formula” shows up twice, like a diagnosis that won’t go away. First it’s America’s problem: content built around recognizable beats, engineered to travel, designed to be consumed more than remembered. Then it flips into a harsher confession: “we have all the stories to tell” is an artist’s boast, immediately undercut by “but they’re all formula.” That’s the subtext: even when you come from a culture with fresh angles, you’re pressured to translate them into familiar genres, tidy arcs, and market-friendly character types. Story becomes packaging.

Contextually, this sits in the late-20th-century shadow of Hollywood dominance, when smaller national cinemas fought to be seen without becoming derivative. Serious is pointing at a cultural trade: America exports scale; everyone else exports specificity, then sands it down to fit the American template. The line works because it refuses purity. It’s a complaint about empire that also admits complicity.

Quote Details

TopicMovie
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Serious, Yahoo. (2026, January 16). The American formula things are out there but they don't have any stories to tell - we have all the stories to tell - but they're all formula. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-american-formula-things-are-out-there-but-106281/

Chicago Style
Serious, Yahoo. "The American formula things are out there but they don't have any stories to tell - we have all the stories to tell - but they're all formula." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-american-formula-things-are-out-there-but-106281/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The American formula things are out there but they don't have any stories to tell - we have all the stories to tell - but they're all formula." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-american-formula-things-are-out-there-but-106281/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.

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Yahoo Serious (born July 27, 1953) is a Director from Australia.

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