Quotes About Film

I left film because I felt that photography was my art. It was something I could do on my own, whereas film was so collaborative. I thought as a photographer I could make something that was artistic and that was mine, and I liked that. And it wasn't until I got back into film and I have very small crews and I could do very tiny filmmaking that wasn't 100 people that I still felt that I was making something artistic as a filmmaker. So, you know, I'm an artist, and whether it's photography or film, I want my voice to be there and I think my voice is very strong in this film.

It makes it very easy. I have a beginning, middle, and end, and I don't film for long - about 20 hours usually for a two-hour film - so it's easily watchable in a week for me and the editor. Once I know who the characters are, I only film those characters, unless somebody else forces their way into the film by a scene happening to them or we meet them by chance.

The thing about film is that your eye is selective. Film isn't. You have to make film do what you want. Simply photographing something doesn't do it. You have to know how to apply light and know what it does on film.

I got into film in an odd way - when I was 17 years old I participated in a Swedish film as an actor. I think every person at that age should get a role in a film, because during that time you want acceptance, and when you have a role in a film you become an important person. I think about that now, and that was my fantastic starting point.

I think that's true of all cinema, that's why cinema is the great humanistic art form. Whatever the film is, it doesn't matter what the film is about, or even whether it's a narrative or figurative film at all, it's an invitation to step into somebody else's shoes. Even if it's the filmmaker's shoes filming a landscape, you go into somebody else's shoes and you look out of their lens, you look out of their eyes and their imagination. That's what going to the pictures is all about.

When I make a film, I never stop uncovering mysteries, making discoveries. When I'm writing, filming, editing, even doing promotional work, I discover new things about the film, about myself, and about others. That is what I'm subconsciously looking for when shooting a film: to glimpse the enigmas of life, even if I don't resolve them, but at least to uncover them. Cinema is curiosity in the most intense meaning of the word.

We have a conservative government that only thinks in terms of efficiency. They are spending a lot of money on military expenses and less and less on culture. My position is that culture can actually be economically viable. When I make a film, the film costs $3 million. Now, in Quebec, it grossed $3.5 million, which is a small film. It's not a comedy. There are no stars in it. And, it still grosses $3.5 million. That's just in Quebec.

Upon its debut, The Room was a spectacular bomb, pulling in all of $1,800 during its initial two-week Los Angeles run. It wasn't until the last weekend of the film's short release that the seeds of its eventual cultural salvation were planted. While passing a movie theater, two young film students named Michael Rousselet and Scott Gairdner noticed a sign on the ticket booth that read: NO REFUNDS. Below the sign was this blurb from a review: “Watching this film is like getting stabbed in the head.” They were sold.

A few of my books, over the years, have been optioned for film. The subject matter of my books, however, is not exactly conducive to Hollywood film treatment. If and when a 'big-budget' film is ever made based on one of my books, my fans and I will more than likely loathe it because it won't be true to its source. That's almost a given.

When you start out as an actor, you read a script thinking of it at its best. But that's not usually the case in general, and usually what you have to do is you have to read a script and think of it at its worst. You read it going, "OK, how bad could this be?" first and foremost. You cannot make a good film out of a bad script. You can make a bad film out of a good script, but you can't make a good film out of a bad script.

I can't believe 50 years have gone by since that film was released. I blinked and suddenly here I am. We all really felt blessed and as for me; how lucky can a girl get. Great music does more than enhance a film, it cements our memories in the film going experience.

Film is so much to do with perfection and how differently you can feel about someone at the beginning of the film and the end of the film.

I got into television criticism because I thought it would be easier than film criticism. Film, you had to know 100 years of history, and TV you only had to know 40 when I started. And I thought, "Well, that's going to be so much easier." But film stayed pretty much the same. And television has changed so many times that my head hurts. So I made the wrong call there.

That's the process of making the film and it isn't until the world puts their eyes to it that you find out if it's creating any kind of connection at all. But every single film at some stage of the film I think, "I wonder what this is going to be?"

It's funny how film is the slowest art form to adapt to freedom. It's had freedom all along. It could've done whatever it wanted to. You know the same freedom that do-it-yourself punk and post-punk musicians had in the late 70s and ever since. That's about the time I started getting interested in film, and I assumed that film would be moving along with the other pop culture forms. Its finally done it but it's taken decades for it to catch up just to basement band level.

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.

Rain Man certainly didn't test really well. If you look at it carefully, you have a disease autism they didn't understand back then, they didn't know in the test audience whether it's okay to laugh or not laugh, because it's a film that's done in a way where, "Well, maybe I'm not supposed to laugh." At the end of the film, Dustin Hoffman gets on the train and doesn't even acknowledge his brother. Not even a glance, nothing. That's why the studio said, "Can't you just have him look at Tom Cruise at the end of the film?"

If I wasn't a trader, I would probably be in the film business in some capacity and writing in some other form. I went to NYU Film School and London Film School.

I'm developing the stuff all the time. There's a film in my head. I'm imagining a film.

I have skipped from style to style from film to film, and I love doing that because it's given me the ability to free myself from the past. Perhaps one of the worst feelings that I can have is the feeling that I'm locked in, like a prisoner of myself, which is something we all feel at some point in our lives. So part of making those stylistic jumps is just to free myself up-to get away from the old or the old Oliver Stone.

Everything that goes into making a film, when it's the finished product, us as the actors look at the film and go: "Oh man, OK, on that day we were doing whatever the circumstances were on that day...." So much goes into it and it's all so incredibly calculated that the behind-the-scenes chemistry that exists between all of us is sometimes forgotten - you can't act that. We've all come together and held hands through each of the processes that I've been a part of.

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."

[When accepting the American Film Institute Life Achievement award] I beg permission to mention by name only four people who have given me the most affection, appreciation, and encouragement, and constant collaboration. The first of the four is a film editor, the second is a scriptwriter, the third is the mother of my daughter Pat (Patricia Hitchcock), and the fourth is as fine a cook as ever performed miracles in a domestic kitchen. And their names are Alma Reville.

There's something about the evolution of television where it evolved from to the things that we're now watching and loving. It evolved from film writers, film actors, and I think gradually people are easing themselves into the amount of time they have.

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.

You give your film away to the audience once it's done. I never look at my films after the premier. The film needs to start its own history.

I made a film called "The Theory of Everything," which is based on Jane Hawing, who was married to Stephen Hawking - it's based on her book about their relationship.That's what the film will be about - they were both incredible, strong, willful individuals and I feel like that Stephen Hawking himself would say that he wouldn't have survived without the influence of Jane Hawking, and they were an incredible team together.

It's really good to talk about it [ hydraulic penises and prosthetic butts], and it's very gratifying when people ask us about the other aspects of the film [Swiss Army Man], but [those things] are part of the movie and they're important and hilarious, a very fun part of the movie, so there's no sense from us of not wanting to talk about that. I think it's exciting that those things exist in a film that is also very heartfelt and emotional and profound.

The way I see film is I think film is like going out to dinner. I feel it's a banquet. You don't want to have the same food you have at home. You want to go and eat a fantastic Chinese meal or Italian or Greek.

I've done a lot of independent film, which are short shoots that are usually four to six weeks, max. I enjoy everything. After one particular experience of work, I like to go in the opposite direction and do a short film, or something else.

I think the biggest challenge was being aware of a certain audience that was going to see this film [lone survivor]. There's a big difference from a typical movie, journalists and critics and film goers that go see it find that, that's the general experience you have as a filmmaker. So that just kind of proves my point that there's a really different audience.

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.

Consider a movie: it consists of thousands upon thousands of individual pictures, and each of them makes sense and carries a meaning, yet the meaning of the whole film cannot be seen before its last sequence is shown. However, we cannot understand the whole film without having first understood each of its components, each of the individual pictures. Isn't it the same with life? Doesn't the final meaning of life, too, reveal itself, it at all, only at its end, on the verge of death?

My favourite film-maker west of the English Channel is not English - but to me doesn't seem American either - David Lynch - a curious American-European film-maker. He has - against odds - achieved what we want to achieve here. He takes great risks with a strong personal voice and adequate funds and space to exercise it. I thought Blue Velvet was a masterpiece.

I'll need every ounce that I have to drive it through. Film and TV require that energy. Sometimes fight scenes can be pretty intense. When I was shooting "Heaven" it was truly guerrilla film-making.

At least I know that one film-maker in my career has had the initiative to come to me and thought of me as being capable of doing interesting and complicated work, and so I have a new-found belief that other film-makers will see me in a different way, the way that Patty did.

I think the book is less emotional than the film. With the film, the emotions are much more raw and in front. In the book, they are kind of ironized and seen through comedy.

The challenge to me as a director was for the audience to see the film as going on in a straight line, so that they did not sense all of these break-ups. I did not want a film to be a collage of all these images.

I believe when you're writing film or television, you can't rely on a crutch or rule that exists outside of the narrative of the film.

I think that because most films where there's a teenager, it's aimed at a teenage audience. Restless is - I wouldn't classify it as a teen film, strictly, but it's definitely a film that appeals to young people, but also gives them credit for their complexity.

I would never say someone's else's film isn't 'a real film.' The quote is inaccurate.

The start of a film is like a gateway, a formal entrance-point. The first three minutes of a film make great demands on an audience's patience and credulity. A great deal has to be learnt very rapidly about place and attitude, character and intent and ambition.

It's only happened to me once [crying in the end of the film] - the end of Forrest Gump. I think it's sad because the moral of the film is that you can have no brain whatsoever and still make it in this world. That made me terribly depressed.

The only difference between working on a huge-budget film and a lesser-budget film, is the quality of lunch and dinner.

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.

I'm starting to teach now: I teach in the graduate film program at NYU and next year I'm going to be teaching at Los Angeles at the film program and English program at UCLA.

Look, I'm just a storyteller. When I make a film, I never want the film to become a vehicle of social propaganda.

The biggest difference for me is momentum. On a smaller film you get to shoot sometimes four or five scenes a day and you've got to do the tight schedule. I think I really feel the luxuries of a big budget film.