Errol Morris Quotes

The advertisement is one of the most interesting and difficult of modern literary forms.

Candor compels me to admit that I have no conclusive research to support my view that jingles are less persuasive than the spoken word. You'd run like hell if a salesman came to your door and began singing at you. Why do it in advertising?

From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor.

Sundance felt like a natural fit. I love coming here, and I do think that this festival suits my films rather than most of the festivals I've been to. I'm not going to Cannes, you know.

I'm a storyteller, and there's some genres I like. I don't think I'm ever going to do science fiction, but I want to do a musical one day. I want to tell stories, I don't really try to get boxed in by a specific genre.

I've got a lot of wonderfully talented, creative directors I've worked with in Texas, but the market we're in, they kind of have to write to that. I think we've done some cool, simple spots. I was very comfortable in Texas, and getting ready to push out into national stuff, try to get to that national-type creative, and then I got sidetracked with this stuff.

It's how you tell the story that makes it new. That's what artists do. They let us look at the world from a different perspective. They let us look at birds in a way that makes us never see birds again in the same way. That's why I don't think computers are healthy for kids. They're too literal. You pop a button and a bluebird comes out. You pop another button and you can take the color blue and shove it into the outline of the bluebird.

I think that limitations are the most important part of any art form

Art in the art world, and culture in general, are branches of the media, which produces our political and social thinking climate.

I wanted my first film to be something where I was surrounded by an amazing cast. I wanted to do something that was completely unexpected, totally out of the box, something that would blow people's minds, that the last thing on the planet earth they would ever think I would do would be it.

Great advertising is the expression of deep emotional sincerity.

I think the art film, or the auteur-driven film - and not only foreign, but domestic films following that path - can get a small share of the box office. And I think that small share may open up a little bit.

You can define advertising as the science of creating and placing media that interrupts the consumer and then gets him or her to take some action.

I tend to think in dramatic terms. In life, there may be an actual drama, but it would be the fictionalized, imagined drama that engaged me.

The first job I did was Volkswagen, we shot it in Long Beach, and it was like they won multiple awards with it and they were super excited about it and that kind of launched me into the world of commercials. Still most of what I do is car-related stuff.

Advertising is a symbol-manipulating occupation

I've always just wanted to tell stories, and create stuff, and I think "Creator" or "Director" would probably be the two words that I go to first.

I like alternating commercials with movies, because it keeps the pace up. You can't slack on a commercial. You need to go fast. That's a terrific piece of action, I think if that was scheduled for a movie, you'd put that in for two or three days worth of work.

I think of a designer as a processor of information — like a scriptwriter or a novelist.

I think the great thing about theatre, and if you start in theatre, is that it does build a confidence in poetic themes and ideas.

Then I got this idea in my head that magazines were like a gallery and if you got your magazine page ripped out and someone stuck it on their refrigerator, then that was a museum – someone’s private museum.

Advertisements are now so numerous that they are very negligently perused, and it is therefore become necessary to gain attention by magnificence of promises, and by eloquence sometimes sublime and sometimes pathetic.

I think of myself as a songwriter, a weaver of story and imagination in a way that a novelist might write a book.

I just think, as a species, what we [people] enjoy most is creation and creativity, and telling stories is an extension of expressing all the thoughts and ideas that we have inside of ourselves.

The real fact of the matter is that nobody reads ads. People read what interests them, and sometimes it's an ad.