Quotes About Film

Well cult is a word you would never say in Hollywood. In any film business, if you're trying to get your next film made, you would never say, "Oh, my last film was a cult film." I'd say, "Oh great, well I hope this one isn't!"

I was playing in a band and was approached to score an independent film. I had never done it, but had written instrumental music, so I figured I could do it. Turns out I loved scoring the film, and took on another couple films before realizing that if I was to be an effective narrative composer, I should study the craft of composition. I stopped taking projects and got a degree in orchestral music composition, and followed that with film scoring studies. Near the end of my degree studies, I started taking on student films as a way to get back into film scoring.

I should say that feminism gave me permission to deal with my own emotional life and put it up front in certain ways, or use film as a way to examine, at that time, my own heterosexual experience. Lives of Performers was the beginning of that kind of investigation. But also, the film was influenced by the aesthetics and structures of experimental film as that was taking place at the same time. Hollis Frampton was a big influence on me at that time.

Personally speaking there's only so long you can go from film to film to film. There's an inspiration an actor gets from the stage.

I think the power of the short film is incredibly underrated. It is way easier to get someone to watch a 15-minute film then a full-length feature. In those 15 minutes you have the opportunity to express your voice as an artist and hopefully connect with your audience. If you are trying to be a first time feature director then a short film that demonstrates you have a grasp on the themes and concepts of the movie you want to direct is a no-brainer. Whether they are collaborators or potential investors, filmmaking is a visual art form so you obviously need visuals to show them!

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.

Writing a film - more precisely, adapting a book into a film - is basically a relentless series of compromises. The skill, the "art," is to make those compromises both artistically valid and essentially your own. . . . It has been said before but is worth reiterating: writing a novel is like swimming in the sea; writing a film is like swimming in the bath.

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.

There's a film you write, there's a film you shoot, and there's a film that you cut - and they're all different.

My job is to make a film that can sit as a standalone piece, that if it's the only Marvel film you see, it's a great film with a great story in and of itself. The lucky thing is that there's a bunch of geniuses who run Marvel that make sure, even if it's a standalone piece, that it's part of a great big jigsaw puzzle that could be appreciated as a whole as well.

Film students should stay as far away from film schools and film teachers as possible. The only school for the cinema is the cinema.

People ask 'How does doing a film compare to doing an ad?' Well, when you're doing a commercial you don't have to sell tickets. You have a captured audience. Which is actually completely rare and great; it gives you a lot of freedom. When you make a film, you have to do advertisements for the film.

When we experience a film, we consciously prime ourselves for illusion. Putting aside will and intellect, we make way for it in our imagination. The sequence of pictures plays directly on our feelings. Music works in the same fashion; I would say that there is no art form that has so much in common with film as music. Both affect our emotions directly, not via the intellect. And film is mainly rhythm; it is inhalation and exhalation in continuous sequence.

It's far easier to write why something is terrible than why it's good. If you're reviewing a film and you decide "This is a movie I don't like," basically you can take every element of the film and find the obvious flaw, or argue that it seems ridiculous, or like a parody of itself, or that it's not as good as something similar that was done in a previous film. What's hard to do is describe why you like something. Because ultimately, the reason things move people is very amorphous. You can be cerebral about things you hate, but most of the things you like tend to be very emotive.

Perhaps I shall not write my account of the Paleolithic at all, but make a film of it. A silent film at that, in which I shall show you first the great slumbering rocks of the Cambrian period, and move from those to the mountains of Wales...from Ordovician to Devonian, on the lush glowing Cotswolds, on to the white cliffs of Dover... An impressionistic, dreaming film, in which the folded rocks arise and flower and grow and become Salisbury Cathedral and York Minster.

The whole switch from film to digital has changed some of the ways I use color and the juxtaposition of light and dark. It's getting better with digital, the separation's gotten better, but I still feel like it's really flatter than film, so I do a lot of screening and subtle textural printing and painting on clothes for film to get it not to look flat.

The size of a studio film lets you see technology in a way that you wouldn't on an independent film, like the gadgets and the angles and all that.

The reason I live in America is because I mean literally every six or seven years I've done something in England. The last lead I had in an English film I did was 1998. So that's why I live here. It's because I get more work. I'll travel back for radio, you know what I mean. I've just got to consider myself to be living in the middle of the ocean, and that way I have a really nice career, if I'm prepared to do television, radio, theater, and film.

I did this film for less money than it costs to stay in this hotel. We shot it in 20 days. We couldn't screw up takes for fun because we didn't have enough film.

It's a simple thing he [Frank Daniel] taught me. If you want to make a feature film, you get ideas for 70 scenes. Put them on 3-by-5 cards. As soon as you have 70, you have a feature film.

I think I'm wealthy. I make a good living for what I do. Well, it depends. If I'm doing an independent film I'm making no money - probably losing money. But if I'm doing a studio film, I'll make a decent wage. I can live for a year without working.

The deal was we had to have people accompanying us and they would ask us not to film something [in North Korea]. For example, we wanted to film at a certain place and there happened to be a building under construction and it didn't look as fancy as the other buildings, so they wanted us to shoot where everything looked finished and made a good impression of the cityscape.

The way the recession has affected Hollywood, a lot of actors that had robust opportunities before in film no longer have such plum options, so cable has done a good job of becoming a happy medium for artists deemed film actors.

If you truly love film, I think the healthiest thing to do is not read books on the subject. I prefer the glossy film magazines with their big color photos and gossip columns, or the National Enquirer. Such vulgarity is healthy and safe.

In film, there are two ways of including human beings. One is depicting human beings. Another is to create a film form which, in itself, has all the qualities of being human: tenderness, observation, fear, relaxation, the sense of stepping into the world and pulling back, expansion, contraction, changing, softening, tenderness of heart. The first is a form of theater and the latter is a form of poetry.

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.

I'm very manipulative towards directors. My theory is that everyone on the set is directing the film, we're all receiving art messages from the universe on how we should do the film.

I don't usually see what I've done. I don't often watch the film or watch the show. It's really about that experience on-set and within the scene. Because later, when the film comes out or the show comes out it's the editor's realm or the director's realm. But that moment on set, that's that electricity between me and another actor, and that's really what excites me.

In the film industry you work very long hours, and making a film is a very intense process.

What makes international cinema so interesting is that each territory has its own sensibility. When you look at an Indian or French film, there's a certain flavor. And even though the language is different, if the film is successful, it has something very common and understandable.

We all know the power of film; we all know there's almost nothing more powerful than to see people on film that look and talk like you, like we do.

When I think about directing a film, the thing that stops me short is wondering if I'm a natural at it the way I think you, and PTA, and Fincher are born directors. Maybe some people's talent is in understanding the ways that film communicates, without dialogue, without plot.

One of the reasons I did this, because I wasn't really looking for another science fiction film, was that my daughter can see it. She's 9 and it's really a good film for all ages.

In music, we can still record analog and then do the post production in digital. In film, sooner or later, we're not even going to be able to film because they won't be able to process. The labs won't exist anymore. You'll just have to do it with digital.

Every time I see a film or TV show, I think about how that composer made those choices and how that director envisioned music and how that could work onstage or in a film and how you could support that even further by putting lyrics to it.

I've made some great movies. 'Risky Business' still stands up. It's timeless. They study that film in film school.

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.

I love Philip Glass' work, not only as a film composer but also as a musician. The film score work that he does always amazes and shocks me.

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 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.

What I want to do is create great content on television and movies. It is not my role to program only for Latinos, and you can't really assume that Hispanics only want Hispanic content. But I do think that we are severely underrepresented in television and film. And instead of complaining about not seeing ourselves, we should become film producers, directors, and writers, and tell our story.

I am honored to be a part of that film. It has a really important message, embracing one's individuality. It was the most universal film I've ever read.

A film like Genevieve to my contemporaries is not a film made years ago, but last week or last year. They see me as I was then, not as I am now.

As a film director and as film actors, you get used to a certain rhythm that's slow. But with TV, it's hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry. It's a different pace. So, it's about adjusting to the pace. It's not meant for everybody.

To make a great movie is such a combination of different things that need to come into play to actually make a memorable film and not have a film to fall by the wayside, to have something live on during the years, and one of those elements is the commitment the actors have to their performance.

It makes sense that it's so different from film and television, because it's so in-depth. As actors, when we're in film or television, we can have transcendent moments and we get to work with really creative and incredible people, but it's such a small percentage of your time that's about your process.

A film, since it is primarily a visual medium, should really be like a silent film. You should be able to watch something and understand what was going on and use voice when you need to communicate something you can't necessarily communicate visually. The book is the opposite. The book is an inner monologue which is beautiful.

I can tell you one other story about Rent Control. The lead actress in the film, her name was Elizabeth Stack, and it turned out she was Robert Stack's daughter. The only problem with that - and she was lovely - was that she was basically hired because [Gian Luigi Polidoro] thought she was [film producer] Ray Stark's daughter. And he figured that if he ran out of money, her father would kick in some more. I can still remember the day he freaked out when he realized she was actually Robert Stack's daughter. He was just screaming "Untouchables!" over and over.