Quotes About 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.

In film you have the script months ahead of time often, for a good film, but in television it seems like you might not get the script until a week or two weeks before you've got to film it. It's a little weird, but also quite challenging. It reminds me of repertory theatre.

Film is a narrative format. Some fashion films try to retain some of the poetic mystery, but most of the time they only end up looking like some crappy, pretentious film-school thing. So I think the interest in film is really about the fashion world finding another form of expression.

There's no more film. Film is gone. We photograph digitally and electronically. We don't really use film the same way anymore - it's disappearing little by little. Things change. We have to change with them. There's no point in liking or not liking it. It is what it is.

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.

One of the things that I love when I go to a film or when I'm reading some book or whatever, is to be told a secret I thought only I knew and then someone says, "Oh my gosh, you know, too." And film can take us into private moments in a way that the theater, I think, kind of can't, and that's one of the reasons I like doing films. And the way a book can is that these little secrets and the private things that go on in our minds that maybe we haven't shared with anyone, and then someone writes it or shows it to you in a film, you think, "Oh, that's me. Oh my God, that's me, I have that secret."

The fact is that you could not be, and still cannot be, a 25-year-old homosexual trying to make it in the British film business or the American film business or even the Italian film business. It just doesn't work and you're going to hit a brick wall at some point.

A film is not a documentary. And what's wonderful about film is that it's a real provocation for people. I never, ever see film as being an absolute version of the truth.

I have an Honors Degree in Drama from the University of Alberta, but when it was done I knew a life in modern theatre was not for me. While figuring out what the hell I might do instead of theatre, I spent a couple of days on a horror film doing stunt work. I'd never been behind the camera before, and I loved everything about it. I joined the local film co-op - The Film and Video Arts Society of Alberta - because you could trade skills for experience. These indie filmmakers were making their own stuff their own way, all the time. Instant education.

I think one of the London Film Festival strengths is that it's set in London but it's not about London. It's about the diversity of this city and it's about world cinema. And that's what London is - London is a place where its identity is always in a state of flux. So, this festival celebrates the way in which it is always changing. That's why London is a fascinating place and that's why the film festival is a fascinating film festival.

There hadn't been one done since the late 70s. I was living in Brooklyn, had no connection to Roger Corman, to no one in this movie. I didn't go to film school. I'm like the person who should have never made this film. But I just decided to put one foot in front of the other. I was writing film articles for magazines at the time. I convinced an editor from one of the magazines that I was working for to give me a shot to do a piece on Roger. This was an excuse to go meet him.

I hate to write and spend months just waiting for the film to get financed. Then when you start preparing the film and you shoot it, you've already forgotten why you wanted to make the film in the first place. I like to have some kind of coherent energy that takes you through writing, preparing, shooting.

There's a film there in competition [of Sundance Film Festival] called To The Bone. It's directed by Marti Noxon. I have a supporting role in it. It got really well received. It's a really great film.

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.

When you have your chance to make a film, don't focus on pleasing everyone. I think the goal is to live in that sweet spot where you focus on making a good film and you have fun with your collaborators, but you don't waste your energy chasing approval every which way. When you have a vision and a good story and you've managed to raise funding, it is your approval as a director that everyone should be seeking. It's very simple.

Vertigo is probably my favourite Hitchcock film and probably one of my favourite films of all time. It's a film that I'm obsessed with. I saw it on its first release in vista vision, projected in vista-vision, at the Capitol Theatre in New York. That moment when the nun comes up in the end... it's just an extraordinary shot.

A favorite film of mine is 'Office Space' and I love 'The Hangover.' That is a really good comedy from character in that film, and that is true of 'Office Space' too.

I don't think you can be involved in film and not be a fan of theirs. The one that I just go back to and can watch anytime it's on TV and I'll watch to the end, is Fargo. I think it's, like, a perfect film, it's genius.

I loved making The Imitation Game and it's really gratifying to hear the audience's response to the character that I play. It was just a little thing that I did because I really liked the film and I liked Benedict [Cumberbatch] and I loved Morten's [director Morten Tyldum] previous film, Headhunters. For me, it was something I did thinking, "Wow, this is a lovely quality piece of work."

I make films that are very personal, and I always have. It's kind of the only thing that I think I have to offer as a filmmaker: the intimacy I've had with experience in a particular world, so the film comes from things I've seen and things I've felt. It gets transformed by the process. I don't think I'd ever start making a film until I had both the intimacy with the subject and the distance to make it live in a certain way.

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.

I was at a Madonna show many, many years ago and I was in the sweet spot and she came out and I mean it was the best part of the show. And I was shooting, shooting, shooting, shooting. And I'm like, "God, I must have shot a hundred pictures have I not run out of film?" And I opened the back of my camera and there was no film in there. So that happened to me only once.

I love editing. I think I like it more than any other phase of film making. If I wanted to be frivolous, I might say that everything that precedes editing is merely a way of producing film to edit.

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.

When we first made this whole idea this was going to be calling card film [Moon] and it was going to give the opportunity to make my first feature film. But it turned out a lot better, we just couldn't stop ourselves from going into it, and we are very proud that it turned into something that people wanted to see.

I love film and I love the film business. And I don't think there's any better way, with my personality, than being a producer which is a little bit of a control freak.

The film 'Slumdog Millionaire' portrays the spirit you feel in India. For those who haven't been there, the film says it all.

It is still harder all around for women to get funding in business and film. There are only a very small group of female unicorns who have the power to tell stories on film. We need to have the courage to push back... all the effort is the work of bravery.

The worst thing about film, from my point of view, is that it cripples illusions which I have encouraged people to create in their heads. Film doesn't create illusion. It makes them impossible. It is a bullying form of reality, like the model rooms in the furniture department of Bloomingdale's.

Some people have told me they remember the film that one of my images is derived from, but in fact I had no film in mind at all.

From film to film, even documentaries, I was learning the medium and learning how to bring form into some kind of relationship with the content, how to work it, and above all, how to create some kind of order out of chaos.

The images are designed, so that after you see the picture two or three times, its no longer my film, it starts to be your film, You recognize the people, you know them, and you don’t even know who directed the picture. PlayTime is nobody.

I wanted to make a film that wasn't just a biography. When you watched it, you actually felt that you watched a movie, that you had an emotional reaction. In order to do that, I felt that I had to really keep myself emotionally raw while working on the film. I had to feel myself crying, so the audience could be moved, too.

I came from a very avant-garde documentary kind of film making world. I like cinema verité, documentaries. I liked non-story, non-character tone poems. And that's the film making that I was interested in.

I just want to be with great teachers. If that means I'm in a horror film with good teachers, I'll do another horror film. But I would love to branch out and do more comedy or just more straight dramas.

The two explorers are given fictional names. But as in real life, they travel to the Amazon roughly a generation apart, in the early-to-mid 20th century. In the film, they're both guided by Karamakate, as a young man early in the story and later as an old shaman. He and the outsiders share a desire for knowledge - self knowledge and an understanding of the world around them, says the film's co-screenwriter, Jacques Toulemonde.

You don't have that interaction with the audience when you're acting for film; you're kind of acting in a vacuum. You're acting for a disinterested grip who just wants to reply to his wife about what time he'll be home for dinner. Everyone else on a film set is also there because they're paid to be there. They're not there because they're passionate about what you do necessarily.

[Warren's Beatty] first film being with this very important director [Elia Kazan], I think we related on that in a big way. And I just was genuinely curious about his experiences in film, and about the people he knew.

I was about 6 or 7, I would have said I wanted to be an actor and an artist. And that just kind of kept honing itself around film and getting closer to film.

I spent a year and a half working for an art fair. I worked as a post-production assistant for a documentary film company for a while. Then I worked at the Apple store because I wanted a discount to be able to buy new gear to edit things while I was figuring out whether or not I wanted to go to film school. Those were the main things.

The most common reason that I turn down a film project is because of my schedule. If I can't devote the time to a score that it deserves, I'll pass. I'll also turn down a film if its moral position is different than what my own understanding of right and wrong.

I grew up doing plays - I went to a stage school after school - and it's always something that I've wanted to do, but, in a weird way, if you do television and film and you didn't go to drama school and don't have a theatrical background, it's hard to get your foot in the door. In the same way that it is for theater actors to get into television and film. There's a weird prejudice that goes both ways.

Film and television are just different. Film is cool because its a complete package. You know the beginning, middle, and end. You can plan it out more, which I like. But with television you get a new script every week, so its constantly a mystery as to what youre going to be doing.

The film business has so many twists and turns that its a miracle any film gets made.

I like traveling and I like not being part of the film world. Especially when you're in the middle of a junket, you're thinking, "I'm not doing this again for four years!"That's about taking time and finding the right story and being in a happy place in life where you can joyfully tell a story. I'm not really into the fame side of things, so I'm very happy with making a film every four years or so.

It [TV] is the cancer of film. It's why people can't be educated to film. In the late '60s, we expected to see a movie or two every week and be stimulated, excited and inspired. And we did. Every week after week. Antonioni, Goddard, Truffaut - this endless list of people. And then comes television and home video. I know how to work exactly for the big screen, but it doesn't matter what I think about the art of movie-making versus TV.

Sadly most films only get exposure if they win an award or were in a festival, which is really difficult because those things cost money! Submitting your film to a festival or campaigning for an Oscar or a Golden Globe is very expensive. Most people don't know that, but all those events require a lot of money. If you have a small independent film, it's very hard to get the attention of people in those circles.

My current project was shot on film, and because of that I've spent my entire day removing dust-specks from negatives. You wouldn't have to do that on digital because you don't get dust on the scanner. I say to myself, "Why am I doing this all day?" I could have just bought a digital camera and I wouldn't have to remove dust-specks ever again. But when you move closer to a film image, it has a real truth to it. And I really like that.