What I find particularly embarrassing are films about artists. Most films about artists must be made by people who would have paid Van Gogh not even an ounce of tobacco for a picture but only half an ounce, and later would have regretted even that because they realized he would have sold it even for a pipeful of tobacco. In films about artists the suffering of the artistic soul, the poverty and the wrestling with the demon, are always put in the past. A living artist who has run out of cigarettes, can't even buy shoes for his wife, is of no interest to film people because three generations of nincompoops haven't yet confirmed that he is a genius.
--The Clown