Quotes About Film

I met Michael Snow and Stan Brakhage the second day after I arrived, you know. I had never seen or heard of Brakhage. For me, it was a revolution, because I was well educated in film, but American-style experimental film was known to me in the abstract, and I had seen practically nothing. I had seen a film then that Noël Burch had found and was distributing called Echoes of Silence. It was a beautiful film, three hours long. It goes forever and it was in black and white, very grainy, and I saw that film and I thought...it was not New Wave. It was really a new concept of cinema.

Well I'm Superman, just not action. I'm kind of looking for something with a lot less action and more talking and listening. I also have a film that's premiering Vegas Film Festival, short film, directed by Joel Kelly, it's called Denial and it's a story, short film, 35 mm short film and it's about a man's struggle to choose between the woman of his dreams and his reality, so it's definitely different than Superman. So I'm really proud of that.

There is something that might be called cinematic beauty. It can only be expressed in a film, and it must be present for that film to be a moving work. When it is very well expressed, one experiences a particularly deep emotion while watching that film. I believe that it is this quality that draws people to come and see a film, and that it is the hope of attaining this quality that inspires the filmmaker to make his film in the first place.

Up until then, whenever anyone had mentioned the possibility of making a film adaptation, my answer had always been, ‘No, I’m not interested.’ I believe that each reader creates his own film inside his head, gives faces to the characters, constructs every scene, hears the voices, smells the smells. And that is why, whenever a reader goes to see a film based on a novel that he likes, he leaves feeling disappointed, saying: ‘the book is so much better than the film.

I naively thought I was making a low-budget movie. But, when the film came out, the Daily Variety reviewer at that time who was named Art Murphy described it as an exploitation film. I had never heard that term before. Roger never used it. So that's how I learned that I had made an exploitation film.

The idea of watching an entire film basically from one person's perspective - and not even really from their perspective, but [it's] probably the most intimately shot film that's in any of these categories. If you're not familiar with Son of Saul, basically it's a film about a Jewish guy who's in concentration camp, but he helps dispose of the bodies after they leave the gas chamber. So, you watch the entire movie looking at Saul's face and looking at his interactions with people.

I wanted to be a playwright in college. That's what I was interested in and that's what I was moving toward, and then I had the lucky accident of falling in love with film. I was 19 or 20 that I realized films are made by people. Shooting digitally became cheaper and better. You couldn't make something that looked like a Hollywood film, but you could make something through which you could work out ideas. I was acting, but I was also conceiving the plots and operating the camera when I wasn't onscreen. I got very unvain about film acting, and it became a sort of graduate school for me.

I approach every film I do in the same way, whether it's an action film or not an action film. I guess if a certain physicality lends itself to action, but I started acting before I reached puberty. I was 7 years old when I started acting. It wasn't until I became a bouncer in New York.

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.

I love Brooke Shields. She's developed into a wonderful actress and a wonderful person. We were all babies then in Brenda Starr. That's why when people say, "What did you think of that film?" I can't do what people do and say, "I hated it." I can't speak ill of a film, because it's so hard to make a film. Everybody thinks we're sitting by a pool peeling grapes, and this is not the case. It's hard. It's hard to do this stuff - and getting harder!

I like to act in films, I like to shoot 'em, I like to direct 'em, I like to be around 'em. I like the feel of it and it's something I respect. It doesn't make any difference whether it's a crappy film or a good film. Anyone who can make a film, I already love. But I feel sorry if they don't put any thought in it because then they missed the boat.

The film The Conquest will be seen on many different levels and the American point of view is always more technical. The French are less technical - it's 'I like it, or I don't like it.' I hope that this film can have a life in the U.S. - it's the grand country of cinema. I grew up with Hollywood movies, so for a French director to have a film distributed in the U.S. is a real opportunity.

For me, it was always clear that Toni Erdmann is more a film about what globalization, capitalism, does with private relationships much more than making a "political" film. It's more interesting to raise questions, because I don't feel in a position to "make a statement" with the film. Toni Erdmann comes from a completely different generation then his daughter, it's the post-war generation, they were very politically engaged. They raised their children with a lot of human worldviews, sent them out in the world believing in a world without borders.

The Company of Wolves doesn't belong in any category, so it's difficult to prepare an audience for it. It's not a horror film, it's not a fantasy film, it's not a children's film - so what is it?

Most young people make films to be accepted, to be discovered, when in fact that was the last idea with the group I went to film school with. To be discovered was not our intention. Our intention was to tell our story our way, and make our own mistakes and learn from film to film.

I considered going to film school; I took a course in film and was very interested in filmmaking as well as film writing.

In America, instead of making the audience come to the film, the idea seems to be for you to go to the audience. They come up with the demographics for the film and then the film is made and sold strictly to that audience.

Before writing a single note of music, and even before the spotting session, I find it best to sit down with the director and just listen to him or her talk about the film - what they're trying to say, what they want the audience to understand or believe, and a thousand other similar questions. The director has most likely been living with the film for years before a composer is attached, and so the director's inclinations, desires, and understanding of the film are paramount.

At the core, I am an actress. And I think, in a way, that's a good thing in that I am, I think, empathetic and sympathetic to the film. I would never pretend to have the discerning and acute critical eye that a lot of the great critics in our business do have. I don't look at it as being a critic or placing a judgment on a film, and I do think, how do you decide which film is best anyway? It's always a little bit of a mixed bag. But, I think it is just a collective group of people coming together to honor the work of an artist - that's how I think of it.

At the end of the process we called a market research company to find out whom the film was for or what was the target audience. We didn't have a lot of money to release the film, so in order for it to play in cinemas, which are dominated by films with much larger marketing budgets, we had to discover whom the film was for.

I think that too often we, film directors, think that a big epic novel and feature film are the same. It's a lie. A feature film is much closer to a short story actually.

Normally my process is to sit in a room and read a script and talk about it and ask questions and just create a dialogue. That goes all the way through shooting. All kinds of thoughts and ideas can find their way in there. As long as you're all on - We're just all trying to tell the story so my job as a director is just to find out what this film wants to be based on, it's just words on a page at some point but then it just needs to go to some level of believable storytelling. I'm discovering the film as I make it, to some degree.

Clearly any film company that makes a film is always going to talk about sequels particularly if they see something as being successful, which Werewolf was.

I didn't want to make Young and Beautiful as very dramatic movie . In a certain way, I wanted to do a girly film. I wanted to make something sweet, pink. With a boy it was too dramatic and too heavy. I had a lot of pleasure with the boys in In the House, I said, "This time I will do a film with girls."

I may film scenes I had no intention of filming; things suggest themselves on location, and we improvise. I try not to think about it too much. Then, in the cutting room, I take the film and start to put it together, and only then do I begin to get an idea of what it is about.

Sônia Braga reacted in a beautiful way to the draft I sent her, so we just made the film ["Aquarius"] as I had written it. Emilie [Lesclaux], my wife and producer, told me, "This is not a two-hour film. This is going to be longer." And I said, "Well, let's try and make it work, whatever length it is."

You do the work and you want people to see it; but, um while I'm doing the work, the result doesn't matter at all to me. Ultimately, I don't, I don't care whether the film is - you know - some big giant box-office bonanza and I don't care if its a complete flop. To me, when a film gets made and it's actually finished it's a success. They're all a success in their own way.

You can make a film with a phone and a computer if you want, if you have the time. So it's a world that is saturated with films and all kind of stuff, so it's such a blessing to be able to make a film and people care, and even if they say that it's a bad idea, at least they care and they're talking about it.

There are specific times where film noir is a natural concomitant of the mood. When there's insecurity, collapse of financial systems - that's where film noir always hits fertile ground.

I'd never been to Africa. This really was my first film [The Lost World]. I'd done 10 years of stage. I'd done a little bit of television. But this was my first film.

It's hard to get a film, you know, you need a very special film to be able to get that experimental. But, I would love to see that happen. I would love the opportunity to be more experimental than I am.

I don't know when the last time was that Steven Spielberg or George Lucas made a movie with Universal, but I can tell you that Universal is leading the charge. They're looking at film differently. They're planning ahead in a way that I've never seen a studio do before. They're believing in a relationship between fan and film franchise, in a new way. They're more receptive to an audience, in part because of social media, in a way we've never been allowed.

I spent all of my money on film. I remember I would do these set-design jobs or transcribe or just anything to get, like, a $100 check and go immediately to Adorama and buy expired film.

I didn't start out thinking that I could ever make films. I started out being a film lover, loving films, and wanting to have a job that put me close to them and close to filmmakers and close to film sets.

I'm somebody who is very, very proud to have been a part of the British film industry all my life and to have kind of been involved with a very important piece of British film history.

Whatever experimental film aromas cloaked my movies were because I'm a gleefully clumsy, primitive filmmaker. I really like traditional pleasingly narrative films, but I also just couldn't resist throwing in the disruptive. It seems to me that art-house film is at its glorious zenith right now, maybe it can even get better? There's just so many good films, you know Cemetery Of Splendour, Arabian Nights, Miguel Gomes, just so much great work coming out.

Tibby sat on the outside of a group of kids in the film program. There was a lot of dark clothing and heavy footwear, and quite a few piercings glinting in sunlight. They had invited her to sit with them while they all finished up their lunches before film seminar. Tibby knew that they had invited her largely because she had a ring in her nose. This bugged her almost as much as when people excluded her because she had a ring in her nose.

The difference between film and theater is that in film, an actor is sort of under a magnifying glass and everything that they do, just the smallest movement, is very detectible.

Filmmakers need to realize that their job isn't done when they lock picture. We must see our films through. Studios no longer do this for a large percentage of films. The odds that your film will get a major campaign are dim these days. So you must find and nurture your own audience and make sure your film has a life.

What people don't understand about making a film is sometimes your experience on the film shapes who you are. You're gone to another country for five months, maybe more, there's training leading up to it... It's a whole life experience that people don't see because they just see the final product wrapped up in a couple hours. You don't see everything that happens around it. I think it's hard to say one movie or one thing; I think they all shape who you are.

Since I was a baby my goal was to be on TV because film was just impossible - you never got any Asian women in Western cinema. I grew up wanting to be in 'East-Enders' because film wasn't even a dream. The community were very much like, 'How can you want to act? It's such a low-class profession.

I had the idea that the film would be much better served by a Branch Rickey lookalike than a Harrison Ford lookalike. I didn't want the audience to go into the film thinking that they knew me from some previous experience in a movie.

Film is the manipulative medium par excellence. When you think back on the history of film and the 20th century, you see the propaganda that's been made. So there are moral demands on the director to treat the spectators as seriously as he or she takes himself and not to see them merely as victims that can be manipulated to whatever ends they have.

Film your murders like love scenes, and film your love scenes like murders.

The first idea of Young and Beautiful was to have a young boy and to explore the sexuality of boys. But, I realized, with a boy doing prostitution, of course it has to deal with homosexuality. And I had a feeling it was too much for the film, you know, sexuality, prostitution, adolescence ... there were too many films for one film.

For me, you go to university to meet lots of different people from different backgrounds. I think that's one of the most important things you get there. And you also get some sense of direction regarding what you want to do when you leave. I sort of know what I want to do in my life - I want to act and ultimately I'd like to write. And in terms of meeting people from different backgrounds, that's what you get on a film set. So the two most valuable things that university would have given me I've sort of achieved by being on a film set.

I wanted to be in film. I wanted to be a film student, possibly be a director or cinematographer, not an actor. That was my goal. I didn't believe I had the physical beauty that I'd seen projected and advertised in movies, in theater. It just wasn't for me.

I have had several offers to make the book into a film. I don't know if the message could be accurately transmitted, and so I have been somewhat hesitant in granting film rights.