James Mangold Quotes

You see the assets of your actors and you see their strengths and you try to play into them. It's like I feel part of my job is as a coach. I'm putting a team on the field and you want to formulate how to make the best game out of these players.

There's a level of immersion that is perfect and there's a level that, for my taste, starts to actually exceed what the screen can provide. At that point, you're kind of overexceeding yourself.

As for the Folsom Prison show, ... would anybody have the guts to do that show now 50 Cent, maybe I think the whole idea of even playing to a crowd of people like that is so politically unfavorable now - it's like, 'What are you doing, singing for these people Do they deserve it' There's such anger in our culture right now, that kind of grace and forgiveness, we don't see that very often.

Having the kind of infinite loop of what a digital stream is - you can shoot for a long time without cutting - allows me to sometimes perform really exciting things.

We're all going to hell for the songs we sing.

We should be writing more great roles for women, period. Another problem is that movies are generally made for 14-year-old boys, and 14-year-old boys want to watch 25-year-old action heroes.

A fantasy film is often improved by some kind of human reality.

One of my favourite movies is Billy Wilder's 'The Apartment.' It's shot in super wide screen, and it's beautiful.

Movies aren't just supposed to be a representation of reality. They're supposed to be an art.

There's a level where the themes of a film are very relevant to me and also the idea of finding out how relevant one genre is to another. I think that westerns and samurai films and superhero films have a lot in common. It's just that the scale of the visuals in tentpole films can sometimes overwhelm the drama.

The funny thing about me is I move from genre to genre, but I essentially shoot all the movies the same way.

Just because your leg might heal doesn't mean it doesn't feel broken. It doesn't mean that a car hitting your body doesn't hurt like the same it would hurt if a car hit your body.

I'd be really interested in making a dramatic, low-key 3D film.

The one aspect I do love about digital is I love to push performance and I love to roll and roll and keep doing takes in a single performance.

I love comic books. Since I was a kid, I've collected them.

For me, making a lot of dramas on one side it's a different sort of challenge, and on the other, it's not a challenge at all, meaning that my goal is to try and bring the realism and acting you might find in a straight drama with the intentions and conflict, where it doesn't feel tongue-in-cheek, but rather committed and real.

The boundary between real life and acting is hard to find.

What I'm really focused on is the majesty of the best films I see are films that don't panhandle for an extra laugh later, but actually deliver the goods. And when the screen goes black, you go, Yes.

If you respect the events and respect the real life tragedy, you can drive your film to address it in some mature way.

My own sense and taste in 3D films has been I don't really like it when it feels like it's a gimmick and it's coming at me, it's flying at me.

I'm a huge comic book collector. When I was a kid, I had both Marvel and DC. I was my own librarian. I made card files. I had origin stories of all the characters, and cross-referenced when they appeared in other comic books. I was full on.

The idea of devoting two years of my life to making a corporate product that looks and smells and tastes like a lot of other things out there with just a different trademark character is a bore.

Filmmakers get into trouble when they're watching too many DVDs and quoting all the time.

I'm really very lucky. I get to do an awful lot. I've been able to make an incredibly wide range of movies and work with an incredible array of people.