William Friedkin on being an artist

“Acting and filmmaking are both professions. It’s a job. Some schmuck who sits around here and says, ‘I’m an artist,’ is fucking crazy. Out of this work, there can come art. Of course there has, and there can. It’s rare. Fellini was an artist. Certainly Antonioni. HG Clouseau was really an artist, as well as Chris Lang and Charles Chaplin and Buster Keaton. I don’t have a perception of myself as an artist. That’s the beginning of the end of a career, when you start to believe that you’re an artist. And instead of just striving for the utmost professionalism in the telling of the story.”

— William Friedkin