If you want to reach a large audience, appeal to idiots.
'Cabaret' was the most commercial success that I've been involved in.
The desire to hit a big home run is dominating the music business.
I know how to make a record that commercial radio or Triple J will smash now... It's kind of hard to stay true and write what you would write if you didn't have that in your head. Because I know I can get way more airplay and get this much bigger... and that's what I'm trying to avoid doing. Trying to avoid the poisons of success.
If you want to be in Hollywood, and if you want to make big international movies, you have to be able to make movies that don't have anything to do with social status or politics. To limit yourself to just do these little small movies and call it black cinema itself is a mistake to me.
One Missed Call,' it was regarded as a mainstream film for my career because it was big budget and filmed in Japan and it really opened wide in Japan, it did really well commercially. So I was really surprised.
I become more seasoned, it's less interesting to try and compete in the pop market.
We don't have a laugh track, which helped Seinfeld a lot, and did kind of tell people when to laugh. It just made it a lot easier. Our show doesn't have that, so it's hard for Middle America to catch on.
The challenge artists face today is whether to be an underground, unheard genius, or to dilute their art for the marketplace.
When I say I don't have to write pop songs anymore, there's no way I'm going to get on the radio at 60 years of age unless I'm doing a duet with Gaga or I was on 'All of the Lights,' which was a Kanye West record that managed to get on the radio.
Spice Girls appealed to little girls. It wasn't good music - mums would buy the albums for their kids - it was all about the gimmicks.
I want to make something commercial that people can pick up on.
I don't feel I'm making a conscious effort to go more commercial.
There are certainly laws and elements that make a film more accessible to mainstream audiences. If you've got Tom Cruise as a strongman, I'm sure it would have larger audiences, but it wouldn't have the same substance.
Usually, environmental programs are not designed for a mainstream audience.
Just like multiplex theatres, the industry had become divided, making films that alienated one kind of audience or another. It was really time to come out of the niche and make something that, at a certain level, clicked with everyone. 'Wanted' did just that. It opened the gates once more.
I pay attention to lyrics and I know what rap fans care about. I try to write for the average listener and I'm conscious of the mainstream without selling out.
There's a form of selling out. It's necessary. You have to become edible for people in Texas. You have to become edible for the Christian right, for mass audiences.
It's like, on my solo stuff, every single person who buys the record, gets it. On the other stuff, the masses... when you have a hit on the radio, not everyone's going to get it. They are going to buy it for the hit.
I think one reason my books have found mainstream success is that they're written from a skeptical point of view.
I have to write pretty songs; that's what gets them on the charts.
I thought Star Wars was too wacky for the general public.
I think what's happenin' is that, with the overflow of music, it's been diluted. There was a time when people would go search out underground records. Now, underground means free, and people don't really care for it. So now artists tend to go more pop and look for the radio.
Actors strive to be part of something like 'Twilight' and what 'Twilight' is, is unbelievable.
Who were the biggest acts in the world in 1987? Guns N' Roses and Metallica. I shamelessly pandered to surfers and skateboarders, and in pictures from then, you'll see Slash and those guys wearing N.W.A stuff. If they thought it was cool, people in Kansas and Wyoming would buy it. That's how we broached the subject.
