Photo Courtesey Orange County Archives

Creative Commons “Directors Mack Sennet, DW Griffith, Cecil B. Demille circa 1915” Licensed by CC BY

The rules:

Thank the person who nominated you.  Thanks Bharath

Nominate 3 bloggers to participate in the 3-day Quote Challenge. @christachn

Post 1-3 quotes each day for 3 consecutive days. Quote #1 coming up

Sweet!  My first challenge.

My three quotes will carry a theme: D.W. Griffith and the early days of Hollywood, but first…a little background on Griffith.  He started making movies in Hollywood in the primitive era of film after producers declined his proposition to film a story that he wrote based on the history of the American civil war era.  He was hired to be an actor instead, and after Griffith had played in so many films that he knew how they got made, a producer needed someone to direct and and he took the reigns.  After a few short years of bucking the system and making short films the way writers told stories in novels, he had invented the film language that would be studied and copied the world over; this film language is still used by directors and editors to this day.

Quote # 1

[Instructions Griffith allegedly gave to his assistants during the making of one of his epics, quoted by Josef von Sternberg in his memoir “Fun in a Chinese Laundry”]

Move these 10,000 horses a trifle to the right, and that mob out there three feet forward
– D.W. Griffith

Does this quote shows the eccentricity of genius…

or the extent of the ego of powerful people?