Pot and Altman

An interesting read.

Money quote:

There are directors whose movies are just delivery systems for their self-confidence, in which self-confidence is really the thing that entertains, because it takes a bold confidence to successfully tell a stupid story, and for sure there are useful energies we suck from awful films that begin with the director’s amazing love of himself. The films of such directors are always the same, until they lose their confidence, and then their movies fail in every way—no fun for us, no money for them. Altman never told the same film twice.

To Altman we can apply Jean Giraudoux’s insight that only the mediocre are always at their best. But Giraudoux also said that the secret of success is sincerity, which contradicts what Oscar Wilde said about bad poetry being unfailingly sincere. But back to Pessoa: “Not sincerity in the absolute, but some sort of sincerity, is required in art, that it may be art.