Time & Perspective Quote by Janet Leigh

Leigh’s line lands like a nostalgic sigh that also doubles as a warning label. “Dream factory” is old-Hollywood slang with a faint chemical bite: an industry engineered to manufacture desire, glamour, and escape on an assembly line. Calling it “simpler” isn’t just rose-colored remembering; it’s an acknowledgment of a system where power was centralized, the rules were brutal but legible, and the audience’s attention flowed through a few gated channels. You knew who made the dreams, and who paid for them.

Then comes the pivot: “As media outlets grew, everything became so complicated.” Leigh isn’t celebrating democratization; she’s describing a fragmentation of control and identity. More outlets mean more opportunity, but also more surveillance, more branding, more versions of the self to maintain. The star system once required obedience to studios; the modern system demands constant self-management. You don’t just perform on screen, you perform your availability, your relatability, your opinions, your wounds.

The subtext is about labor as much as fame. “Complicated” reads like exhaustion: the expansion of platforms turns charisma into a 24/7 job, where every appearance can be clipped, monetized, misread, or weaponized. Coming from Leigh - a star forged in the mid-century machine and later immortalized by Psycho’s meta-fame - the comment carries a lived sense that publicity has shifted from periodic event to permanent condition. The dreams didn’t stop; the factory just outsourced the work to the dreamers.