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PAULINE KAEL |
1919-2001; American film critic |
| I admire the artist who can make
something good for the art-house audience, but I also applaud the commercial heroism of a
director who can steer a huge production and keep his sanity and perspective and decent
human feelings ... beautifully intact. ... I am not being facetious when I suggest that
the quiet, concealed art of good craftsmanship may be revolutionary now. It’s more
difficult than ever before for a director to trust his accumulated knowledge and
experience, because on big commercial projects there’s so much pressure on
moviemakers to imitate the techniques of the latest hit, to be ‘up to date’,
which means always to be out of date. |
• review of Carol Reed’s musical Oliver! in The New Yorker, December 1968 |
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H V KALTENBORN |
1878-1965; US radio commentator; appeared as himself in
Mr Smith Goes to Washington and The Day the Earth Stood Still |
| I doubt if television has
much value at the present time. There is nothing you have shown us which could not be more
definitely shown by lantern slides, moving pictures or sound movies. Engineers who have
worked on television for commercial concerns seem convinced that there is nothing to it. |
• At a demonstration of television by Professor Edwin B Kurtz, head
of electrical engineering at the State University of Iowa, 1934 |
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IMMANUEL KANT |
1724-1804; German philosopher |
| Certainly one may say, ‘Freedom
to speak or write can be taken from us by a superior power, but never the freedom to
think!’ But how much, and how correctly, would we think if we did not think, as it
were, in common with others, with whom we mutually communicate! |
• ‘What is Orientation in Thinking’ in Critique
of Practical Reason and Other Writing in Moral Philosophy, 1788 |
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Dr ALAN KAY |
1940- ; Chief scientist, Apple Computer; co-founder of Xerox PARC;
Vice-president R&D Walt Disney Company |
| The best way to predict the future is to invent it. |
• Article in MacWorld, mid 1980s |
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H V KERSHAW |
Producer, Granada Television; pioneer of Coronation Street |
| The truth is, of course, that nowadays the BBC is much more of a commercial channel than is ITV. |
• The Street Where I Live, 1981 |
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JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES |
1883-1946; British economist, architect of the welfare state |
The artist walks where the breath of the spirit blows him. He cannot be told his
direction. He doesn't know it himself. But he leads the rest of us into fresh pastures and teaches us to
love and enjoy what we often begin by rejecting.
At last the Public Exchequer has recognised the support, the
encouragement of the civilising arts and life as part of their duty. I don't believe it's yet realised what
an important thing has happened. State patronage of the arts has crept in and it's happened in a very English,
informal, unostentatious way. Half-baked, if you like.
By provision of concert halls, modern libraries, theatres and
suitable centres we desire to assure our people full access to the great heritage of culture in this nation.
How satisfactory it would be if different parts of the citizenry would again walk their several ways
as they once did. Let every part of merrie England be merry in its own way. Death to Hollywood! |
• BBC radio talk about the founding of the Arts Council, July 1945 |
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DAVID KINGSLEY |
Managing director, National Film Finance Corporation 1954-56?, managing director British Lion |
| It is now apparent that the type of middle budget picture which is most appropriate for the
training of new directors is not suited to the present pattern of exhibition. |
• address to Association of Cinematograph Technicians
annual general meeting, quoted in Films and Filming, August 1955 |
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F J KINGSBURY |
American historian and sociologist |
| Within a very recent period, three new factors have been suddenly developed which promise to
exert a powerful influence on the problems of city and country life. These are the trolley, the bicycle and the
telephone. It is impossible to foresee at present just what their influence is to be on the question of the
distribution of population; but it is certain, that it adds from five to fifteen miles to the radius of every
large town. It is by such apparently unimportant, trifling, and inconspicuous forces that civilisation is swayed
and moulded in its evolutions and no man can foresee them or say whither they lead. |
• 1895; cf, Morley 1895 |
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SŘREN KIERKEGAARD |
Sřren Aabye Kierkegaard
1813-1855; Danish philosopher |
| Suppose someone invented an instrument, a convenient little talking tube which, say, could be
heard over the whole land. ... I wonder if the police would not forbid it, fearing that
the whole country would become mentally deranged if it were used. |
• source unknown; quoted in
Malcolm Muggeridge: A Third Testament 1976, p129 |
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LOUIS KLOTZ |
Louis Lucien Klotz
1868-1930; French Finance Minister 1910-1913 and 1917-1920 |
En raison de la vogue dont il jouit, le cinématographe peut plus facilement que tout autre
supporter le poids de la taxe.
Because of the fashion it is enjoying, the cinema is better able than others to support the tax.
[0041] |
• In response to complaints about the amusement tax, 1920; quoted in Georges Billecocq:
Le Régime fiscal de l'industrie cinématographique en France, Paris, 1925 |
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THEODORE KOMISARJEVSKY |
Fyodor Fyodorovich Komissarzhevsky
1882-1954; Russian designer, active in England
1919-1939, designed cinemas for the Granada circuit |
| The commercial cinema not only caters for imbeciles, it breeds them. |
• Kine Weekly, 17 January 1935 |
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Sir ALEXANDER KORDA |
Sándor László Kellner
1893-1956; Hungarian-born British film producer |
| If American interests obtained control of British production companies they may make British
pictures here but the pictures made would be just as American as those made in Hollywood. We are now on the
verge of forming a British school of film making in this country. |
• Evidence to the  Moyne Committee, 1936 |
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SIEGFRIED KRACAUER |
1889-1966; German film historian and theorist |
| Films of a nation reflect its mentality in a more direct way than other artistic media. |
• From Caligari to Hitler, 1959 |
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STANLEY KUBRICK |
1928-1999; American-born film director/producer |
| Take a film that costs $10m. Today
it’s not unusual to spend $8m on USA advertising and $4m on international
advertising. On a big film, add $2m for release prints. Say there is a 20 per cent studio
overhead on the budget: that’s $2m more. Interest on the $10m production cost,
currently at 20 per cent a year, would add an additional $2m a year, say, for two
years—that’s another $4m. So a $10m film already costs $30m. Now you have to get
it back. Let’s say an actor takes 10 per cent of the gross, and the distributor takes
a worldwide average of a 35 per cent distribution fee. To roughly calculate the break-even
figure, you have to divide the $30m by 55 per cent, the percentage left after the
actor’s 10 per cent and the 35 per cent distribution fee. That comes to $54m of
distributor’s film rental. So a $10m film may not break even, as far as the
producer’s share of the profit is concerned until 5.4 times its negative cost. |
• quoted in Michael Ciment: Stanley Kubrick, 1984 |
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BERND KUNDRUN |
1957- ; Chief executive of German television channel Premiere |
| There is no solution in sight. I am very pessimistic about the digital market. |
• February 1997 |
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AKIRA KUROSAWA |
1910-1998; Japanese film director |
| I would never make a picture especially for foreign audiences. If a work can’t have a
meaning to Japanese audiences, I as a Japanese artist am simply not interested. How can a man make a film for
another culture without a keen feeling for the people, their likes and dislikes, the way they think and act? |
• quoted in ‘Japan’s Poet Laureate of
Film’, Show Business Illustrated, April 1962 |
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