Quotes About Films

I do not make films which are prescriptive, and I do not make films that are conclusive. You do not walk out of my films with a clear feeling about what is right and wrong. They're ambivalent. You walk away with work to do. My films are a sort of investigation. They ask questions . . .. Sometimes I hear that some [Hollywood] studio is interested in me. Then they discover that this is the guy who works with no script, that there is no casting discussion, no interference, that I have the final cut, and that does it.

Some of these things I saw in foreign films - African films, Cuban films - long before I decided to really go on this course as an actor. I started to think about what values I saw in those films that I wanted to bring to my projects

There are two types of films - one made by the big-time producers, the other is low budget stuff made by some producers who make films for the heck of it, they complete their films for small amounts, sell it at low costs with almost no publicity.

It's really a great luxury to have, to be able to go from big films to indie films, too. Because I'm on the job learning as an actor, and independent films is where I'm learning to act.

Films with female protagonists don't attract many eyeballs. Most of them are perceived as feminist films. If Bollywood starts giving women major roles in entertaining movies, then the audience, too, will open up to the idea of watching commercial films in which the actresses do more than just play the role of the hero's love interest.

Some films do portray women in their 40s well, and some other films don't. Some films are written by women, so maybe there's a little more accuracy there.

Filmmakers need to give the audience that something extra, an incentive to spend money and go to the multiplex - the ticket prices are high. Otherwise they'd just stay home, buy DVDs or download movies. But if there were only big budget movies it would be impossible for the film industry to survive. So I emphasize the importance of mid-range films. But those films need the support of theatre owners. The theatre chains have to have the vision to realize the need to support smaller films for the growth of the domestic film industry.

Film is a wonderful thing and it can be so many different things. I don't want to turn my back on any of the different ways movies can be. I love the movies. I love going to the films. I like very serious films, I love foreign films, and I love big, fun movies - as long as they're well made and they've got good scripts. That's the most important thing.

All of a sudden, there are great Japanese films, or great Italian films, or great Australian films. It's usually because there are a number of people that cross-pollinated each other.

I built up a knowledge of 1960s and '70s British films because my dad used to work nights, and I'd sit up with my mum and watch films - 'How I Won the War' and the films of Richard Lester, Karel Reisz and John Schlesinger.

Blaxploitation films were black films targeting black people. They were films made to appeal to a culture in a way that was supposed to be unfiltered.

If you look at the most meaningful science fiction, it didn't come from watching other films. We seem to be in a place now where filmmakers make films based on other films because that's where the stimuli and influence comes from.

I love the fact that a lot of my audience is people from the inner city. African-Americans love my films. Whenever I go to have a meeting at Universal, the security guard just leaps to his feet and comes over, bumps my hand, and says, "Thank you! Thank you, I love your films!" And it's people who are kind of at the cutting edge of life and survival, and being near the nitty-gritty, who like my films, and I like that.

I like voice-over in films, and most of my films have been voice-over films.

I was very young, maybe five. The opera was very... I was attracted to opera to the point that I think it's the reason I started to write music for films. I never studied. There are film and music school that teach you how to write music. I never studied that. But the influence of opera, which is a combination of storyline, visuals, staging, plus music... that was perhaps the best school I could have had. That's what gave me the idea of coming to Hollywood to write music for films.

I am a cynical optimist. Big opening weekends are like cotton candy. The films you will remember over time are the films that stick in the consciousness of the audience in a good way.

All of the films I have made, that I have chosen to make, are all about the thin line between good and evil. And also the thin line that exists in each and every one of us. That's what my films are about.

I'm very fatalistic about life. Whatever happens, happens. The imperative for me is that I do my contribution for my people, for my culture. I still want to make films for them. I still want to make films that confront our struggles.

Different directors have different techniques in the use of films. Cronenberg is very different in the way he works with film, and how he takes the audience into his films is different than how Peter Jackson would do that or Jon Stewart. So, if you go between those artists, you shift gears and you kind of fall into the working method of that film.

It's gotten out of control. It's taking bigger and bigger names to make smaller and smaller films. I worry that important films without a big name attached won't get made at all.

I've always been such a fan of short films - in fact, I never considered that I would actually make a feature. I just thought I wanted to make shorts for the rest of my life. They are a lot harder to have shown and a lot harder to find and see as an audience, but I don't know. It's just a form that I really love. I was just making them for the process, but ultimately, I did get them into festivals, and they did end up on television, and they had as much of a life as short films can.

Dark Water was one of my favourite films to shoot because of Walter. I had seen the previous films he had directed, Central Station and Motorcycle Diaries, and I thought they were great. I really trusted him

If, you know, all your life you're making films or whatever, and somehow along the way you lose meaning in whatever you're doing when you're making the films, they're just not the same as they used to be to you. That doesn't mean your life is over; it just means maybe go try to live a different life.

I love films that make me react emotionally and physically when you walk out of the cinema. Two of my favorite films however have got to be 'The Tree Of Life' and 'The Piano Teacher,' which also stars one of my favourite actresses Isabelle Huppert.

American films are the best films. This is a fact. Cinema is - along with Jazz - the great American art form. And cinema in a very real sense created the American identity that has been exported around the world.

The truth is most of the films that make a lot of money no one remembers, and I'm not interested in making films that no one remembers.

My dad is an engineer by trade but worked a lot with the people in the Indian film industry when I was growing up. He started out distributing films from India here in the '70s because there was no place to go for people to watch movies from the homeland. So he developed a network of actors, writers, directors, and musicians that became his friends and that he would tour around the country with, doing stage shows of the musical numbers from their films.

It's a terrible thing to make films that are never seen or experienced by audiences. Often times nobody knows about them, even though they are great films. They are not promoted and that's really sad.

I'm in the process of working out an arrangement to make some very, very, very small films in the midst of all these films and maybe that will help. But you get tired of talking. You just want to do it.

When you look at golf films before us they're all - garbage or satire. A lot of sports films tend to vilify the opposition. Where the opposition becomes this big angry monster, so big you can't beat him.

At this moment, everyone is in crisis, not only in Italy but all over Europe. Only in America do they make films that are successful all over the world. In Europe, production is quite poor. We have three or four or five films, which is not enough.

The secrecy thing has gotten to be more and more prevalent in films, and maybe that's good. It's nice to go see a film and not know anything about it. Sometimes I feel like we know too much about films.

There's something that happens where you go, if you're lucky, goodness me, from film to another film to another film. And you can sort of feel that if you step off that treadmill, it might all go horribly wrong and you might never be employed again, you know. And I suddenly thought that that's not necessarily the case. And I also thought we make drama as actors about people in the world and that if you are on that treadmill, you start making films about other films.

Cult films last forever. I have been in plenty of films that no one will remember, so it is nice to be in some movies that some people do, and that they pass it along to the next generation I'm meeting kids named Ash now.

With a few exceptions, Fellini's films have failure and despair running through them: Life continues, but I can't imagine 'Felliniesque' as an exclusively uplifting adjective. Fellini's best films are the ones that distill this essence -- the paradoxical quality of melancholic ecstasy, a surreal, bittersweet vitality -- to perfection.

As soon as television became the only secondary way in which films were watched, films had to adhere to a pretty linear system, whereby you can drift off for ten minutes and go and answer the phone and not really lose your place.

I think Magnolia is one of the best films I've ever seen and I can say that straight and out and anybody that disagrees with me I'll fight you to the death. I just think it is one of the greatest films I've ever been in and ever seen.

It's easier to greenlight your own films when you're not surrounded by other people aspiring to make films. You have to work a little harder and rely more on yourself and your collaborators and the real relationships you have. There are so many hypotheticals that dominate the industry, and everyone's always waiting for someone else to tell them when to make a film and write a check and sign the talent.

In the last ten years of watching films I have found that some of the foreign films I saw affected me most. One American film that stands out for me for its workmanship and artistry is 'Ratatouille.' It was an astonishing effort in filmmaking.

A lot of people love Tarantino’s films because they’re spectacular, they’re beautiful, they’re wonderful. He hires the best group of artists - not only actors, but everyone around: best photographers, best set designers, best production designers, costume designers. A lot of people love his films because they’re bloody, they’re gory, they’re savage. But very few people see that he’s a very political director.

I come from the belief that all good films find their time whether it's on opening week or sometime later. That's certainly true with some of my favourite films that might relate to this [The Assassination of Jesse James] film in terms of cadence like Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid, or McCabe & Mrs Miller or Days of Heaven. I found them 10 to 20 years after they were made.

I think most of the time with independent films, you don't know where it's gonna end up. I've done a number of films that may never see the light of day, so it ends up being exclusively about the content, material, the characters and the story. Things that you maybe wouldn't get an opportunity to do otherwise. So, as an actor, obviously it's so different.

Some films go so well, and some films are disappointing. It's the beauty of the craft. You get it right, and you get it wrong. You have tremendous highs, and you have tremendous lows. Hopefully, you learn from them and become better, as you go along.

I'm always open. I try not to have a closed mind. In fact the only reason why I'm able to continue to make films since 1986 is I have been adaptable. If I weren't flexible I sure wouldn't be making films this many years as I've been doing it. I've been making a film a year almost since 1986 and that's hard. That ain't easy.

A lot of student films in art shows are samey. It's a look at the life of someone making these boring films.

My filmmaking style of remixing came out of necessity. When I was a film theory student at UC Berkeley in the early 1990s, there were no film production facilities. The only way I learned to tell stories on film was by re-cutting and splicing together celluloid of old movies, early animated films, home films, sound slug - anything I could get my hands on.

My films require that the spectator ask the big existential questions. If you're not interested of turning inwards for answers, my films won't fulfill their whole purpose.

My films are therapy for my debilitating depression. In institutions people weave baskets. I make films.