But who said art has to cost money?

Challenging thoughts in this Francis Ford Coppola interview:

“We have to be very clever about those things. You have to remember that it’s only a few hundred years, if that much, that artists are working with money. Artists never got money. Artists had a patron, either the leader of the state or the duke of Weimar or somewhere, or the church, the pope. Or they had another job. I have another job. I make films. No one tells me what to do. But I make the money in the wine industry. You work another job and get up at five in the morning and write your script.

This idea of Metallica or some rock n’ roll singer being rich, that’s not necessarily going to happen anymore. Because, as we enter into a new age, maybe art will be free. Maybe the students are right. They should be able to download music and movies. I’m going to be shot for saying this. But who said art has to cost money? And therefore, who says artists have to make money?

In the old days, 200 years ago, if you were a composer, the only way you could make money was to travel with the orchestra and be the conductor, because then you’d be paid as a musician. There was no recording. There were no record royalties. So I would say, “Try to disconnect the idea of cinema with the idea of making a living and money.” Because there are ways around it.”

[via kottke]

1 Comment But who said art has to cost money?

  1. fosco

    One can agree with the assumptions: “Artists never got money. Artists had a patron” and also “Art should be free”, (I wouldn’t say “Art”, better: “culture”, but anyway).

    But saying that downloading films or music means, for the artists, just not to get rich anymore, well, that’s quite naif. And who is he talking to, when he asks to abandon the idea of “making a living with art/cinema”?

    Like downloading and free distribution wasn’t questioning the whole idea and existence of musical/cinema, copyright, merchandising and production industries, which are currently revolving around the mere creation of a work.

    f

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