Daily Inspiration Quote by Arthur Cohn

It reads like a pep talk, but it lands harder because it comes from a producer: someone whose job is to turn other people's convictions into something financeable, shootable, and survivable. "You have to believe" is less about optimism than stamina. In producing, belief is the currency you spend before anyone else will. Scripts are fragile, schedules collapse, investors flinch, critics circle. If you don't project certainty early, the project never accrues the momentum that makes it real.

Then the line tightens: "stick to your guns". That metaphor is blunt, almost militaristic, and it matters. Producing is a profession of constant compromise, so the phrase signals a boundary. Not every hill is worth dying on, but some are: the casting choice that makes a story legible, the ending that keeps its moral bite, the political angle that will make executives nervous. Cohn, a long-running European producer associated with prestige and international cinema, would have lived inside the tension between artistic specificity and market pressure. His best-known kind of work often depends on resisting the softening forces of co-production, translation, and "universal" appeal.

The subtext is also strategic. Belief isn't just internal faith; it's performative leadership. A producer sells conviction to directors, crew, talent, distributors, juries, and audiences - repeatedly, sometimes against the evidence. The quote romanticizes resolve, sure, but it also admits a truth about cultural work: persistence is not a personality trait, it's a production method.