From Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences October Bulletin, October 19, 1928, 2–3.
[Many will question the inclusion of this little-known piece in that it is not perhaps an interview. I will argue that it is close to an interview, and too good not to be reprinted here.]
The Directors Branch of the Academy conducted a discussion on talking pictures, at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel on Monday night, October 15. Chairman J. Stuart Blackton introduced D. W. Griffith….
Mr. Griffith responded in a somewhat facetious vein, apparently intended as a protest against a predominance of commercialism in motion picture production. He wondered what the Academy was all about, why the high sounding name, and why he should discuss talking pictures, concerning which he knew nothing. He questioned the right of motion pictures to any claim of art and declared the science of the pictures was mostly the science of making money. Therefore, he thought that it should be called a business and not a science or an art. Perhaps, he added, the talking pictures may in time bring true art into this business of quickies and squawks and moans, when the poetry of Keats and Shakespeare and the beauty of the great master painters may be paralleled through something like the theatre medium, with talking pictures produced not for money but solely for beauty and truth. What was needed, he claimed, was a new deal of the cards before the real art can be expected and he ventured to hope that this dream may be brought about by talking pictures.
[After Griffith comments, director William C. de Mille expressed his admiration and respect, but chose to differ. “Mr. Griffith questions the art of the motion picture,” said de Mille, “when he, himself, is the one man who has done more to make it an art, than almost anyone else. I don’t think he can have looked at his own pictures.” Griffith left the meeting after de Mille’s remarks, returning to the United Artists studio where he was in the middle of shooting.]
“I hope you did not take my remarks too seriously. I did not take them seriously myself. I wanted to give you something to talk about.”