think that their tastes are better than others. It takes experience and effort to understand that you can't please everyone, least of all yourself, but you still have to make a movie that appeals to an audience somewhere. That's why filmmaking is both a business and an art; you have to compromise and live with. The best filmmakers are the ones who turn compromise into opportunity. And we have to re-learn that value. "It's not the funding. It's not the genre. It's the way the funding and the genre are being packaged and what that says about our attitude to New Zealand film." &lt; -- - If it's an attitude problem then its with the audience, not with the filmmakers. Filmmakers have produced one distinctly New Zealand story after another, but the audiences have not turned up. At least we're being honest about the audience's attitudes towards our own work. We're taking on criticism and embracing it (for a change). We're all trying our best to make a difference and we acknowledge that our cinema has it flaws which we must overcome, even if its by shaking up the status quo and our thinking. Whether New Zealanders take an interest in the quagmire we've found ourselves in, or just heckle us from the cheap seats, is entirely up to them. "The fourth estate exists for a reason." &lt; -- - That doesn't mean that you can make arbitrary statements without doing the research and expect to go unchallenged. Poor journalism