Wealth & Money Quote by Phillip Noyce

The most revealing word here is "obviously" - a small shrug of realism that doubles as an indictment. Phillip Noyce frames filmmaking as a three-way negotiation: the audience you want to delight, the system that funds you, and the quiet third party in every pitch meeting, the bank. "Responsibility" is doing heavy lifting. It sounds moral, almost civic, but it points to something colder: debt, recoupment, the spreadsheet logic that shadows every creative choice. He isn't romanticizing compromise; he's naming the financial architecture that makes compromise feel inevitable.

The line also captures how the studio system turns "audience" into a proxy for risk management. "Work for your audience" reads like an artist's duty, but in context it's also an executive's mantra: what "plays", what "tests", what fits a quadrant. Noyce lets both meanings sit in the same sentence, exposing how entertainment and economics get welded together until they're hard to separate. The subtext is that even well-intentioned directors internalize the bank's gaze. You stop asking only "Is this good?" and start asking "Is this financeable?" - a subtle shift that can sand down idiosyncrasy long before anyone yells "notes."

Coming from a director who has moved between prestige, action, and studio-scale work, it reads less like bitterness than like tradecraft: an experienced professional explaining the real job. The artistry isn't just in the frame; it's in navigating the ledger without letting it write the movie.