Just like the earlier nudity, I think this is around the point where I fully accepted that “Bruno” would never be a commercial venture, and I should not hold back on any thoughts, ideas, and topics any longer.
I know, you’re all thinking, “he ever held back?”
‘Bruno’ was, and is, innovative, brave, and thoughtful. It did not– YOU did not cast it as regular syndication fare or the stuff of coffee-table cartoon ‘anthologies’ like the Second Herman Treasury you have portrayed above. There’s a value to not writing between the lines on the paper they hand you, which most people are quite convincingly persuaded not to do. That makes ‘Bruno’ an exemplar of a kind of freedom we need most badly, no matter who you are: The freedom to not constrain yourself. I thank you for it. And hope for more.
Art for commerce requires a compromise between what you want and what the public will buy, or can be compelled to want. Some people can do this effortlessly. Walking barefoot on the naked rocks of a new shore and compelling us to follow… that’s something else. Something more valuable, I think. Random House and Andrews McMeel be damned.
What Pete said, so much better than I could.