Ingratiate Quotes

(on Peter Sellers) I would squirm with embarrassment at the demeaning lengths he would go to in order to ingratiate himself with the Royal Family.

I don`t mistrust sentiment and emotion, no. The question becomes, `Are you giving them something to make them a little happier, or are you putting in something that is inherently true to the material?` Are people behaving the way we all really behave, or are they behaving the way we would like them to behave? I mean, the world is not as it`s presented in Frank Capra films. People love those films - which are beautifully made - but I wouldn`t describe them as a true picture of life. The questions are always, is it true? Is it interesting? To worry about those mandatory scenes that some people think make a picture is often just pandering to some conception of an audience. Some films try to outguess an audience. They try to ingratiate themselves, and it`s not something you really have to do. Certainly audiences have flocked to see films that are not essentially true, but I don`t think this prevents them from responding to the truth.

(on An Officer and a Gentleman (1982)) I think Louis Gossett Jr.`s performance was wonderful, but he had to do what he was given in the story. The film clearly wants to ingratiate itself with the audience. So many films do that. You show the drill instructor really has a heart of gold - the mandatory scene where he sits in his office, eyes swimming with pride about the boys and so forth. I suppose he actually is proud, but there`s a danger of falling into what amounts to so much sentimental bullshit.

Somewhere around the fifth or seventh grade I figured out that I could ingratiate myself to people by making them laugh. Essentially, I was just trying to make them like me. But after a while it became part of my identity.

Our Founding Fathers would shudder to see how easily forces outside the mainstream now seem to effortlessly push some Senate leaders toward conduct the American people don`t want from their elected leaders: Abusing power. Inserting the government into our private lives. Injecting religion into debates about public policy. Jumping through hoops to ingratiate themselves to their party's base, while step by step, day by day, real problems that keep American families up at night fall by the wayside here in Washington.