Life & Wisdom Quote by Ann Macbeth

Macbeth’s “probably” is doing quiet, strategic work: it softens the blow while still delivering a bleak diagnosis. She’s not romanticizing the lone artist; she’s pointing to infrastructure. The phrase “large enough industry” frames filmmaking less as a matter of talent than of throughput - the volume of paid work that lets people cycle between projects without falling out of the profession entirely. “Move in and out” is the key tell. Independence here isn’t a glamorous stance; it’s a precarious rhythm that only functions when there’s a dense ecosystem of crews, studios, exhibitors, and financiers to catch you between gigs.

Then she pivots to what crowds out that ecosystem: “full-time jobs” and “institutionalised jobs.” Those terms carry a double edge. On one hand, institutions create stability and training pipelines; on the other, they harden into gatekeeping. An “institutionalised” industry rewards permanence, seniority, and bureaucracy - the kinds of structures that prefer predictable output over experimental, one-off work. Subtext: in a smaller market (or a regional scene overshadowed by larger centers), the safest route is to attach yourself to an institution, and the price is a narrowing of what gets made and who gets to make it.

Given Macbeth’s era, the comment reads as an early cultural-economic critique: creative independence isn’t just an aesthetic choice, it’s an employment problem. She’s arguing that without scale, “independent” becomes a label for unsupported labor, not artistic freedom.