How to Read a Film Quotes

“Poetry is what you can’t translate. Art is what you can’t define. Film is what you can’t explain. But we’re going to try, anyway.”
― James Monaco, How To Read a Film: Movies, Media, and Beyond

“No sensible person would prefer a computer screen to a well printed page for reading text”
― James Monaco, How To Read a Film: Movies, Media, and Beyond

“As Edward Albee put it neatly in his play The Zoo Story (1958): What I am going to tell you has something to do with how sometimes it’s necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly….”
― James Monaco, How To Read a Film: Movies, Media, and Beyond

“…the great thing about literature is that you can imagine; the great thing about film is that you can’t.”
― James Monaco, How to Read a Film: Movies, Media, Multimedia

“the industry,” the deal had become both more important and more entertaining than the product, and the biggest and best deals involved studios, not movies,”
― James Monaco, How To Read a Film: Movies, Media, and Beyond

“The process of adapting to the new conditions was slow and painful, but it need not have been. It was fifteen years or more before the studios began dimly to understand how best to operate in the new environment. Aging owners and production heads rigidly clung to the old methods of mass production in studio complexes with enormous overhead costs.”
― James Monaco, How To Read a Film: Movies, Media, and Beyond