There are things you do for the fun of doing them or to work or to hang with certain people. But the projects that I've invested myself in and cared about most deeply have absolutely been activated by a desire to chase something that I relate to, or that I see as having the potential to speak to someone else directly.
Edward NortonMost of the movies that I've made that I really felt good about and cared about made very little money anyway, so I'm not particularly worried about people downloading and sharing them.
Edward NortonIt's ginned up by the corporate plutocracy as a way of distracting the working-class people that it's screwing. We hamstring our own natural progressivism in this country, and that's really stupid.
Edward NortonOn the downside, to paraphrase Thom Yorke talking about the music business, we're still having to deal with the stench of the last fart of the dying corpse of this regressive vision that America is a white, middle-aged, male, conservative country.
Edward NortonIn a very philosophic sense I think doing the work is itself a good thing. But at the end of the day, since we're taking other people's shekels to do it, and their work is being able to make a return out of it, it forces you to consider the fact that you're doing it for other people. The whole construct is built around the assumption that it's going to get shared, and that someone else is going to find value in it - entertainment, catharsis, enlightenment, or whatever.
Edward Norton