Very occasional quote of the day: interesting

“It may sound like an extremely obvious thing to say, but I think it is worth saying nevertheless that when you are making a film, in addition to any higher purpose you may have in mind, you must be interesting; visually interesting, narratively interesting, interesting from an acting point of view. 

All ideas for creating interest must be held up against the yardstick of the theme of the story, the narrative requirements and the purpose of the scene; but, within that, you must make a work of art interesting. 

I recall a comment recorded in a book called Stanislavski Directs, in which Stanislavski told an actor that he had the right understanding of the character, the right understanding of the text of the play, that what he was doing was completely believable, but that it was still no good because it wasn’t interesting.”

- Stanley Kubrick, interview from Sight And Sound, 1972

As a drummer you could read that and think OK, I need to play interesting then, and start making some bad playing decisions. You have to be careful how you take advice from other art forms.      

As players, the job is to play. It's an immediate thing of making the performance, while hopefully— though it's not hip to talk about it— communicating some creativity and movement of energy. There are some consummate sidemen whose only concern is truly just to show up and do the job, but I think we all would like to be engaging when we play— that may be a better word than interesting for us.   

Interest is more of a consideration when acting as a bandleader, producer, arranger, or composer. There's time to think about it— in selection of players, repertoire, programming an album or set of music, style of production, and in the actual content of an arrangement or original composition. 

It is more hip for musicians to be thinking strictly about performance and craft aspects, and while we don't want to be preoccupied with audience response— what the hell— unless somebody is a more serious artist than Kubrick, it's worth some consideration.