If you really want to communicate something, even if it’s just an emotion or an attitude, let alone an idea, the least effective and least enjoyable way is directly. It only goes in about an inch. But if you can get people to the point where they have to think a moment what it is you’re getting at, and then discover it, the thrill of discovery goes right through the heart.
Stanley KubrickSuppose by chance you do get picked up. What have you done? You shot a horse; that isn't first degree murder; in fact, it isn't even murder; in fact, I don't know what it is.
Stanley KubrickSome people demand a five-line capsule summary. Something you'd read in a magazine. They want you to say, 'This is the story of the duality of man and the duplicity of governments.' I hear people try to do it -- give the five-line summary -- but if a film has any substance or subtlety, whatever you say is never complete, it's usually wrong, and it's necessarily simplistic: truth is too multifaceted to be contained in a five-line summary. If the work is good, what you say about it is usually irrelevant.
Stanley KubrickI don't think that writers or painters or filmmakers function because they have something they particularly want to say. They have something that they feel. And they like the art form; they like words, or the smell of paint, or celluloid and photographic images and working with actors. I don't think that any genuine artist has ever been oriented by some didactic point of view, even if he thought he was.
Stanley Kubrick