Comparative Reality

Sorry for holding out on you, but Wired has a good interview with Alan Moore.

Near the end, he talks about the corrosive effect of too much money on storytelling:

It removes artistry and imagination and places money in the driver's seat, and I think it's a pretty straight equation—that there is an inverse relationship between money and imagination.
...
...if they have $100 million, say, pulling a figure out of the air, to spend upon their film, then they somehow don't see the need for giving it a decent story or decent storytelling. It seems like those values just go completely out the window.

This is something that I've believed for a while (which, obviously, makes it true), and goes with my theory that too much success ruins creativity.

Just try to tell me that you read Moore's quote and didn't think about George Lucas. (Or Michael Bay's entire career, but it's not like he started with any artistic talent or integrity.)

Artists need to suffer. Happy artists don't produce good things. Which is why I really appreciate it when creative people that I respect, such as, say, Harlan Ellison, do their best to manufacture their own suffering, when required.