Ideas are the best thing going. Somewhere there's all the ideas, and they're sitting there and once in a while one will bob up and the idea is made known suddenly. Something is seen and known and felt all at once, and along with it comes a burst of enthusiasm and you fall in love with it. It's unbelievable that you could get ideas and that someone could give you money to make a film from them.
And you've gotta be true to them because they're bigger than you first think they are. They're almost like gifts, and even if you don't understand them a hundred per cent, if you're true to them, they'll ring true at different levels. But if you alter them too much they won't even ring; they'll just sort of clank. I really believe it's like The Beach Boys said: "Be true to your school." Later on someone might tell you, "That's a very uncommercial idea", or "That's going to make a hundred million dollars." But if you're thinking about that up front, for me you're thinking about the wrong things.
The sharpest point here, I think, comes at the very end: if you're hell-bent on getting a certain specific result from an idea rather than developing and executing the idea itself, you're doing it wrong. How could way priorities that disordered not bear damagingly on the final product? Get concerned about the financial returns and you trip over your own feet. As I've long maintained, money, alongside love and fame, proves elusive when pursued directly.
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