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A movie is never any better than the stupidest man connected with it.

Ben Hecht

Writing a good movie brings a writer about as much fame as steering a bicycle. It gets him, however, more jobs. If his movie is bad it will attract only critical tut-tut for him.
BEN HECHT

Jobs Stars Writing
Prejudice is a raft onto which the shipwrecked mind clambers and paddles to safety.
BEN HECHT

Diversity Justice Safety
The only practical way yet discovered by the world for curing its ills is to forget about them.
BEN HECHT

Forget Way World
Chicago is a sort of journalistic Yellowstone Park, offering haven to a last herd of fantastic bravos.
BEN HECHT

Chicago Offering Yellowstone
Out of the thousand writers huffing and puffing through movieland there are scarcely fifty men and women of wit or talent.
BEN HECHT

Differences Fifty Men
In moderating, not satisfying desires, lies peace.
BEN HECHT

Deceit Desire Lying
In Hollywood a starlet is the name for any woman under thirty who is not actively employed in a brothel.
BEN HECHT

Hollywood Names Thirty
Despite all our toil and progress, the art of medicine still falls somewhere between trout casting and spook writing.
BEN HECHT

Art Fall Medicine Writing
Immorality, perversion, infidelity, cannibalism, etc., are unassailable by church and civic league if you dress them up in the togas and talliths of the Good Book.
BEN HECHT

Bible Book League
I have usually forgotten those who have admired my work, and seldom anyone who disliked it. Obviously, this is because praise is never enough and censure always too much.
BEN HECHT

Admire Always Dislike Obvious Work
I discovered early in my movie work that a movies never any better than the stupidest man connected with it. There are times when this distinction may be given to the writer or director. Most often it belongs to the producer.
BEN HECHT

Directors Men Movie
H.L.Mencken’s war aims, according to the handful of observers who deigned to notice his conflict, were the overthrow of American Democracy, the Christian religion, and the YMCA. He was also credited with trying to wipe out poets and luncheon orators.
BEN HECHT

Art Christianity Conflict War
I’ll tell you a secret. We live in a mad and inspiring world.
BEN HECHT

Mad Secret World
When you overpay small people you frighten them. They know that their merits or activities entitle them to no such sums as they are receiving. As a result their boss soars out of economic into magic significance.
BEN HECHT

Blessing Money People
I ran everywhere in the city like a fly buzzing in the works of a clock, tasted more than any fit belly could hold, learned not to sleep, and buried myself in a tick-tock of whirling hours that still echo in me.
BEN HECHT

Buzzing Clock Everywhere Hour Learn
The producer, director and stars are the geniuses who get the hosannas when it’s a hit. Theirs are also the heads that are mounted on spears when it’s a flop.
BEN HECHT

Director Flop Geniuses Head Producer Spear
There’s one thing that keeps surprising you about stormy old friends after they die – their silence.
BEN HECHT

Death Friends Old Silence
I know that a man who shows me his wealth is like the beggar who shows me his poverty; they are both looking for alms from me, the rich man for the alms of my envy, the poor man for the alms of my guilt.
BEN HECHT

Envy Guilt Men
People’s sex habits are as well known in Hollywood as their political opinions, and much less criticized.
BEN HECHT

Opinions People Political Sex
I see a lot of fog and a few lights. I like it when life’s hidden. It gives you a chance to imagine nice things, nicer than they are.
BEN HECHT

Fog Light Nice
A movie is never any better than the stupidest man connected with it.
BEN HECHT

Connected Men Stupidest
The rest of the fraternity is deadwood. Yet, in a curious way, there is not much difference between the product of a good writer and a bad one. They both have to toe the same mark.
BEN HECHT

Between Curious Difference Good Mark Same Writer
Of the things men give each other the greatest is loyalty.
BEN HECHT

Giving Loyalty Men
The movies are an eruption of trash that has lamed the American mind and retarded Americans from becoming cultured people.
BEN HECHT

Eruption Mind People
I’m a Hollywood writer, so I put on my sports jacket and take off my brain.
BEN HECHT

Brain Hollywood Sports
I have known a number of Don Juans who were good studs and who cavorted between the sheets without a psychiatrist to guide them. But most of the busy love-makers I knew were looking for masculinity rather than practicing it. They were fellows of dubious lust.
BEN HECHT

Lust Number
A wise man will always allow a fool to rob him of ideas without yelling “Thief.” If he is wise he has not been impoverished. Nor has the fool been enriched. The thief flatters us by stealing. We flatter him by complaining.
BEN HECHT

Men Wise Yelling

A movie is never any better than the stupidest man connected with it.

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A movie is never any better than the stupidest man connected with it.

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