"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
Ridley Scott slips a whole theory of audience psychology into that plainspoken, almost workmanlike phrasing. “Gradually” does the heavy lifting: craft isn’t a lightning bolt, it’s a slow recalibration of ego against the clock. Early directors often treat length like proof of seriousness. Scott frames it as a learned humility, the moment you stop equating duration with value and start treating time as the most expensive special effect you can spend.
“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.
“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.
Quote Details
| Topic | Movie |
|---|
More Quotes by Ridley
Add to List

