"What you do, is you gradually become more and more experienced, and more and more realistic about dramatic tolerance, i.e. about how long the play should be"
About this Quote
“Dramatic tolerance” is the sneaky term here. It’s clinical, like a dosage, and it implies limits you don’t get to argue with. Viewers don’t just “prefer” shorter films; they metabolize drama at a certain rate before attention, emotion, and comprehension begin to fatigue. Scott’s subtext is that pacing isn’t a poetic instinct so much as a negotiated contract with biology, culture, and the room you’re screening in.
The repetition - “more and more experienced, and more and more realistic” - sounds like someone who’s been through the edit wars. “Realistic” isn’t about cynicism; it’s about the cutting room’s brutal math: every extra minute has to earn its seat. Coming from Scott, a director synonymous with scale, the comment reads like an insider’s warning: spectacle tempts you to linger, but cinema is not a museum. The point of experience is learning when to leave the audience wanting, not when to show them everything you shot.
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Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Scott, Ridley. (2026, January 17). What you do, is you gradually become more and more experienced, and more and more realistic about dramatic tolerance, i.e. about how long the play should be. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/what-you-do-is-you-gradually-become-more-and-more-24664/
Chicago Style
Scott, Ridley. "What you do, is you gradually become more and more experienced, and more and more realistic about dramatic tolerance, i.e. about how long the play should be." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/what-you-do-is-you-gradually-become-more-and-more-24664/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"What you do, is you gradually become more and more experienced, and more and more realistic about dramatic tolerance, i.e. about how long the play should be." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/what-you-do-is-you-gradually-become-more-and-more-24664/. Accessed 25 Feb. 2026.

