Taylor Hackford Quotes

It's very clearly stated in the film: You make your own choices, and what you're always fighting is ego.

This devil loves mankind because men are going to always make the choice that will send him into ascendancy. He's been winning the game for a long time.

I make films about working class people. All my films have always been about that. For example, the brothel is a workplace. It's aberrant, but a workplace nonetheless. I was more interested as opposed to glamorizing and saying, oh, this is a great erotic place, it's a place of business. The commodity is sex.

When Ray Charles is concentrating he's like a piece of granite, nothing twitches, nothing, ... He sat for 25 minutes solid like that, like a stone, and I thought, 'Oh my God, if he doesn't like it I'm dead.' ... And then finally, after 25 minutes he started to talk back to the screen. I heard him say 'That's right. That's the truth.' .

It was the era of Tab Hunter and Rock Hudson; they all had a certain look.

I make films about working class people.

When I finish a film, I put it away and I never look at it again.

I love actors and I understand what has to happen within a scene. Any scene is an acting scene and actors never act alone, so there has to be an interchange. If it's a dialog scene, if it's a love scene, it doesn't matter because you need to establish a situation.

Show business is one of those things that people can use to get themselves out of the lower rung of society.

Music has always been an important thing to me in my life and understand I've worked in the music business.

The score is always the wonderful icing. The score tells you the emotional content of the film. What the characters don't say, the music can say.

It isn't glamorous until after the film is finished, and you are at the premiere and getting your picture on the cover of magazines.

I really believe you can predict when someone has a great attitude, a real well of talent.

Look at Walter Huston in The Devil and Daniel Webster: It's an incredible performance.

I feel very comfortable shooting music, and I think you can see that.

As a filmmaker, "no" is not in my vocabulary. I've got to figure out a way.

Because when you have millions of people with this kind of need for gratification, and the culture is saying that it's possible for everyone to satisfy all of their needs and desires all of the time, there are obviously going to be clashes - clashes of ego.

An actor has to embody a role.

The director's job should give you a sense of music without drawing attention to itself.

It's much easier to work with an unknown.

I try to get the best performance an actor can give.

We all get paid very, very well, and we have responsibilities.

You'd be surprised how many movie stars still care about the work.

But the process of making a film is not glamorous. Certainly not my films.

The most disgusting, appalling horror of our world that we live in, to me, is sex trafficking and the enslavement of men and women, boys and girls, in the sex industry. That is the most horrific, horrific thing that's happening and it's happening in all of our towns here in Los Angeles, in New York, in London, in Paris, all over the world, and I think that's really what has to be addressed.

I also know what looks good before the camera, how to move the camera, and how to get a story on the screen.

But, unfortunately, sometimes that affirmation creates a sense that you deserve special treatment and recognition in areas where you're not so talented.

Well I don't think I've scored my life exclusively to Ray Charles.

The SAS is the most elite of the special forces in the world. They are not people who go out and advertise; they keep it inside. They don't want anybody to know about them.

Ray Charles, in his own way, it's like at the beginning, Ray Charles changed American music, not once but twice.

My creative partner is a writer, and he's got an executive producing credit on this film. We've made three films together and I would never underestimate the impact of a writer.

The whole concept of the devil is a metaphor on one level.

Russell Crowe is very difficult, but it's worth it. He's the real thing. I can tell you this. Russell Crowe was just as difficult before he was an international star as he was afterwards.

I'm not in front of the camera, they are. I encourage them; I build up as much of their confidence and ego as possible. They've got to take control; I can't act it out.

If people are worried about the size of their trailers, I kind of say their priorities are off.

But a writer's contribution is literary and a film is not literary. When you take that stuff off the page, and cast the people who are going to fit into those roles, that's what being a director is.