Excerpt from Conversations with Wilder
I kind of think that overall, audiences are pretty smart. Sometimes they are a little cruel; sometimes they are too nice to you. But as soon as you say, “I don’t give a damn whether they come to see me or not, what’s the next picture?” — then there is no next picture. If you do something that is totally artificial, that is unbelievable, it might be good for the plotting, but you don’t want to see “plots”. You want to see stories develop. Overall, I think audiences are much smarter than what they are getting. Mostly, they are being talked down to.
I think I have a new hero.