Misty Copeland and the poetry of Saul Williams, by Drog5 for UnderArmour

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What I learned from my failure is that it’s not creativity you should be afraid of, you should just be aware of what the value is. The film industry is very simple, like any market. If your films make money, it’s a lot easier to get money to make more films. If your films don’t lose money, you can still find people to give you money. But if you lose money, that’s a very dangerous, slippery slope to get into. The problem with “Fear X” - creatively I didn’t solve it as much as I should have. That’s my fault, pure and simple. Financially, the film was just too expensive for what it was worth. If the film had cost half a million dollars, nothing would have happened. But because it cost between $3-4 million, it was just way too expensive for the kind of film it was. Also when I was making it I thought I was god’s gift to mankind. I felt I could walk on water. Which is what you do. You have to have that attitude. But when it became such a colossal failure, and because I invested my own money it, not only was the movie a failure, but I owed my bank $1 million. Now when you owe your bank $1 million, you’re pretty much ruined for life. At the same time, I was a has-been at 30 years old. I felt really sorry for myself. I was really pathetic. In a way, failing was always something that had to happen to me. Because you need to learn you can’t walk on water. Then you can understand when it really works.

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— Nicholas Winding Refn, on the failure of Fear X (2003) and market value, via IMDB

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