Goldwyn's New Clichés memo
anecdote · Hollywood/biographical ·
retold in 15 talks
Hollywood producer Sam Goldwyn, after reading that his films used too many clichés, immediately sent a memo to his scenario department demanding 'we urgently need new clichés.' Žižek uses this as a positive model for political reinvention.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 14
“we urgently need new cliches. he was right and that's what we need politically today”
“please invent as fast as possible good new clichés. and he was absolutely right”
“we urgently need new original clichés it's deeply true because it's easy to be original with just originality the true revolution is to introduce new clichés”
What it carries
one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)
Its cast and sources
populated by
Samuel Goldwyn12Jarosław Kaczyński4Jean-Luc Mélenchon2Mikhail Bakhtin3Byung-Chul Han2Jean-Claude Milner4Ludwig van Beethoven2Narendra Modi5
alongside works
Every retelling 14
Hollywood producer Sam Goldwyn, after reading that his films used too many clichés, immediately sent a memo to his scenario department demanding 'we urgently need new clichés.' Žižek uses this as a positive model for political reinvention., illustrating new proverbs,political imagination
Hollywood producer Sam Goldwyn, famous for his 'goldwinisms', wrote a legendary memo to his scenario department: 'please invent as fast as possible good new clichés', Žižek endorses this as proof clichés are indispensable., illustrating ideology,hedonist Dalai Lama Buddhism
After being told his films had too many clichés, Goldwyn memo'd his writers to produce 'new original clichés', Žižek takes this literally as the correct political slogan: we need new clichés, not mere originality., illustrating new clichés,originality,ideology,everyday life
MGM producer Sam Goldwyn, notorious for apparent malapropisms, read a complaint about too many old clichés in his films and wrote a memo demanding 'more new original clichés', which Žižek reads as profoundly right: true creativity installs new conventions, not merely breaks old ones., illustrating true creativity,new clichés
The Hollywood producer Sam Goldwyn, told that his films contained too many old clichés, responded by ordering his scenario department to 'produce more new clichés.' Žižek takes this seriously: creating new clichés, new stable routines, is our post-pandemic task., illustrating pandemic fatigue,destruction of everyday life,the role of stable customs
When film producer Sam Goldwyn was told his films had too many clichés, he sent a memo to his scenario department demanding 'urgently new original clichés.' Žižek uses this to illustrate that changing everyday life requires not abolishing forms but inventing new ones, equally habitual but genuinely different., illustrating difficulty of changing everyday life,new forms for daily existence