"The United States and Turkey are the only two countries that don't have some kind of subsidy for the Arts. The whole culture in society has made certain films more acceptable. I turned down so many films in the '60s and '70s"
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A veteran composer doesn’t complain like a lobbyist; he counts the bodies. Alex North’s gripe about subsidies isn’t bureaucratic trivia, it’s a quiet indictment of how a culture decides what gets made, what gets heard, and who gets to keep working without selling their taste by the pound.
Pairing the U.S. with Turkey is a pointed bit of comparative shame: two very different nations, same refusal to treat art as civic infrastructure. North is talking about money, but he’s really talking about permission. When the state won’t underwrite risk, the market becomes the sole patron, and the market prefers the legible: safer genres, cleaner politics, familiar stories. His line about “certain films more acceptable” is the tell. Acceptable to whom? Not the public in some abstract sense, but the gatekeepers who finance and distribute - studios, exhibitors, advertisers - whose definition of “culture” often means “what won’t scare investors.”
The last sentence lands like a personal footnote that doubles as an era’s autopsy. North came up during mid-century Hollywood’s battles over censorship, blacklisting, and the slow corporatization of the studio system. Turning down “so many films” in the ’60s and ’70s reads as both pride and regret: a craftsman resisting projects he found artistically or morally thin, while acknowledging that the industry’s drift narrowed his options. Without subsidy, refusal is expensive. North’s subtext is blunt: when art has no public backstop, conscience becomes a luxury good.
Pairing the U.S. with Turkey is a pointed bit of comparative shame: two very different nations, same refusal to treat art as civic infrastructure. North is talking about money, but he’s really talking about permission. When the state won’t underwrite risk, the market becomes the sole patron, and the market prefers the legible: safer genres, cleaner politics, familiar stories. His line about “certain films more acceptable” is the tell. Acceptable to whom? Not the public in some abstract sense, but the gatekeepers who finance and distribute - studios, exhibitors, advertisers - whose definition of “culture” often means “what won’t scare investors.”
The last sentence lands like a personal footnote that doubles as an era’s autopsy. North came up during mid-century Hollywood’s battles over censorship, blacklisting, and the slow corporatization of the studio system. Turning down “so many films” in the ’60s and ’70s reads as both pride and regret: a craftsman resisting projects he found artistically or morally thin, while acknowledging that the industry’s drift narrowed his options. Without subsidy, refusal is expensive. North’s subtext is blunt: when art has no public backstop, conscience becomes a luxury good.
Quote Details
| Topic | Movie |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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