Daily Inspiration Quote by Taylor Hackford

Hackford’s line has the clipped, pragmatic feel of a director talking story mechanics, not theology. “The whole concept” signals he’s less interested in arguing about whether the devil exists than in what the idea does on screen and inside an audience’s head. Calling it “a metaphor” reframes Satan from a horned character into a narrative device: shorthand for temptation, moral drift, and the seductive logic that helps people excuse what they already want to do.

The key tell is “on one level.” It’s a filmmaker’s hedge and an invitation. Metaphor is the entry point that makes a supernatural premise palatable to modern viewers who distrust literal evil as medieval cosplay. But the phrase keeps the door open to other levels: the devil as psychological projection, as social contagion, as the face we give to systemic harm so it feels personal and fightable. Hackford is implicitly defending ambiguity, the kind that lets a story function both as genre entertainment and as moral parable without collapsing into a sermon.

Context matters with Hackford because his career lives in the overlap between showmanship and conscience: star-driven dramas where power, appetite, and consequence collide. In that world, the devil isn’t just a monster; he’s a contract, a persuasion, a vibe. The subtext is almost craft advice: if you want evil to feel real, don’t overexplain it. Give it metaphorical weight, then let viewers recognize their own bargains in the shadows.