In my Rogue Film School, which I just founded, I say–and not even as a provocation–that I prefer people who have worked as bouncers in a sex club, or have been wardens in the lunatic asylum. You must live life in its very elementary forms. The Mexicans have a very nice word for it: pura vida. It doesn’t mean just purity of life, but the raw, stark-naked quality of life.

The way it works now is that an engineer often does structure, an architect does skin, a space planner does interiors, and an industrial designer does product. It’s a nasty mess. The quality of life that it produces is also a nasty mess, and we all suffer. The problems are where those things rub up against one another.

I think it is fatal to specialize. And all kinds of things show us that and that the more diverse we are in what we can do the better. But I don’t think that you can dispose of the constructive and inventive things that America is doing—and say oh we aren’t doing anything anymore and we are living off of what the poor Chinese do. It is more complicated than that.

“Sometimes I like to talk about the “paradox of marketing.” As marketers we feel obligated to get our clients/brands where the eyeballs are. We then descend on that thing like vultures and in most cases we destroy that thing we originally loved and saw as an opportunity to reach consumers. (Think George from “Of Mice and Men” with the rabbit.) We’re currently in the process of killing Twitter as well.”

– Freddie Laker via Take Me To Your Leader

via www.hectorsos.net

“But, we seem to live in a world where the pursuit of popularity is burning on ample oxygen and to avoid it is to invite the anxiety one feels when ostracized from the herd. Twitter filled air-waves capitalize on tweets as a self-esteem currency where people long to be followed. Yet, I find myself reacting as a reclusive paranoid amidst this socialized narcissism. Mostly because I think that popularity has little to do with insight or intelligence. I was the kid beaten up on the playground due to late onset puberty and an astigmatism that led to coke-bottle lenses in welfare frames. Growing up poor and unattractive creates a longing for and distrust of the popular kids. I see in the twittering twits the same bullet-headed aggression. The instinctive tweeters fail to consider the possibility that tweeting too hard can often contradict their own self importance.”

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Chuck O’Connor

“I don’t compromise often. I live in the real world and know what’s possible and what’s not. It’s a dialogue between what you see appearing before your eyes and what you direct, choose, realize. Compromise is a dangerous word because it makes me think of petulance, and I don’t want to be like that. You can’t go kicking-and-screaming to get everything you want; rather, you adapt to get it as close as you can to your vision. It’s about learning and working within the confines of your limitations, be they financial, physical, or temporal.”

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Choreographer David Dawson

Some choice pearls from an imagined, and quite interesting, Media Magazine ‘interview’ this month with Bill Bernbach (who passed away in 1982), culled from verbatim quotes, and surprisingly prescient:
I want to warn you against believing that advertising is a science…Logic and overanalysis can immobilize and sterilize an idea. It’s like love – the more you [...]