Quotes About Films

I've made a way to allow myself to do big films, small films, dramas, comedies, action films, horror films, or whatever interests me, as a movie-goer. I like watching myself in movies. I want to choose movies that allow me to enjoy myself, the way that I want to entertain myself.

The films that have influenced me and the films that have motivated me and inspired me were films that resonated, films that made me think after I saw them.

Many people are under the delusion that I'm just a special-effects man, but I've worn many different hats in my day. On every film I've been involved in, I worked with the writer and producer. We really formulated those scripts. We tried to make films that were logical but still had the fantasy feel of it. I enjoy Aardman Animation's films with Wallace and Gromit, but they're obvious puppet films, whereas we tried to disguise it and make our effects characters in the films rather than obvious puppets.

In an old model, the way a film would imprint itself on the public's consciousness is to get a theatrical run. But now there are more documentaries and more films in general being released than ever before. There are weeks when the New York Times is reviewing 15 films, so it's harder to leave an impression on the public. A lot of these films are seeing their financial future on digital platforms. Because viewers aren't hearing as much about films in theatrical release, I think the festival circuit is going to have increasing importance for the life of a film.

It's really a great luxury to have, to be able to go from big films to indie films, too. Because I'm on the job learning as an actor, and independent films is where I'm learning to act.

It's been very much in the blood since I started imagining films or shooting with 8mm when I was a kid. I made some films and thought about films, but then I went into writing. Becket is something that's definitely on the cards. We have to see where that fits in the schedule, because it's a big picture and I have a lot of writing obligations at the moment. I'm wary of anything with a budget over a certain amount.

The problem with working with a record label is they maybe a song I want to make a video for that they will refuse to make a video for because they don't see that song as a single. And I found that very frustrating. I realised what I was doing was making these short films for the blind. They were films and all you had to do was put some headphones on and close your eyes and listen to my voice and you'd be able to visualise the images that I'm putting into your brain. And so I started calling what I was doing 'films for the blind'.

I prefer the films that put their audience to sleep in the theater. Some films have made me doze off in the theater, but the same films have made me stay up at night, wake up thinking about them in the morning, and keep on thinking about them for weeks.

You read reviews by top reviewers of films that not only had remarkably interesting scores, but films whose effectiveness was absolutely enhanced, and frequently created by the music, yet the reviewers seem unaware that their emotions and their nervous reactions to the films have been affected by the scoring. This is a serious flaw. Any film reviewer owes it to himself, and the public, to take every element of the film into account.

I have two different categories of favorite films. One is the emotional favorites, which means these are generally films that I saw when I was a kid; anything you see in your formative years is more powerful, because it really stays with you forever. The second category is films that I saw while I was learning the craft of motion pictures.

When I stopped making films, they were getting on to the more realistic films and the explicit films and all. They were depicting life as it is, and some of it was unpleasant. I gradually moved away from that.

A lot of people just go to movies that feed into their preexisting and not so noble needs and desires: They just go to action pictures, and things like that. But if you go to foreign films, if you go to documentaries, if you go to independent films, if you go to good films, you will become a better person because you will understand human nature better. Movies record human nature in a better way than any other art form, that's for sure.

I like to see people put themselves into films, which is part of the reason why I love Woody Allen films so much - I believe his actors' work. I have a feeling that many actors in his films are similar to their characters, and I like that.

As soon as I finished film school I was thinking about, how do I get to feature films? It took about eight years, and I'm still working. Feature films was not the end goal. Feature films was one of the stages. Getting to the point of the Coen brothers or Tarantino, where you're writing your own material and have the budget to do it properly, that's the end goal, and I'm close to that.

There are films that I've made that I like a little bit more than the others. But the films that I mostly watch, and see over and over again, are not my own.

I said I would do all the films about the commercials, and the films about ball-bearings and Ford tractors and so on, if once a year they gave me money for a free film.

I wanted to make Canadian films, and I ended up making American films.

My own personal taste in films as a member of the audience was not completely in line with films I was doing.

All of the films I have made, that I have chosen to make, are all about the thin line between good and evil. And also the thin line that exists in each and every one of us. That's what my films are about.

The whole tradition of cinema is dominated, really, by films about good guys versus bad guys, good versus evil. But we have very few films about the nature of evil itself.

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.

The Oscar for the films, it'd be nice. But I don't make those kind of films, and I don't think that will ever happen.

There are films that are difficult. There are films that would actually affect your personal life because of the length of the production, how long [you're away] from the family.

If it helps me in the way that if this movie is successful, I get to make more films, great, and the more films that I make and the more interest that I'm allowed to cover, the better for me and the better, hopefully, for the people who like to watch me.

Once, a French journalist told me that all my films are the same. I said, 'Excuse me? I work hard to make them different.' What she meant was that in my films there is a character that faces insurmountable odds, and they overcome them. But I thought that might be true, but you need certain factors for drama, and you need to overcome them.

My dad is an engineer by trade but worked a lot with the people in the Indian film industry when I was growing up. He started out distributing films from India here in the '70s because there was no place to go for people to watch movies from the homeland. So he developed a network of actors, writers, directors, and musicians that became his friends and that he would tour around the country with, doing stage shows of the musical numbers from their films.

I like the idea of making films about ostensibly absolutely nothing. I like the irrelevant, the tangential, the sidebar excursion to nowhere that suddenly becomes revelatory. That's what all my movies are about. That and the idea that we're in possession of certainty, truth, infallible knowledge, when actually we're just a bunch of apes running around. My films are about people who think they're connected to something, although they're really not.

I have a lot of films that I haven't gotten made, and that continues to trouble me. But someday, some way or another, I think I will. It's all about timing. There's a moment when you're hot and studios will make your next film, and then there's a moment when you're really cold, and they couldn't care less what you want to do next. That's when you have to recede and make lower-budgeted films.

I think that until a filmmaker knows that about him- or herself, the films they make will just be copies of other people's work. It's important for anyone who wants to make films for a living, but I think perhaps it has an even greater weight for female filmmakers since they represent a much smaller percentage of the population. Their voices are fewer so they must be even stronger.

I wasn't that familiar with silent films. I didn't know, for example, how hugely popular silent films were in the 1920s, how people would go to the movies several times a week.

Certain types of films will never test well. My films never seem to test well.

I like action films, not exclusively, but I like Samurai films. I like Westerns. Not so much war pictures, but a few. I like kinetic cinema.

I turn up in Los Angeles every now and then, so I can get some big money films in order to finance my smaller money films.

Forget horror icon, Kety Bates is an icon. She's an acting icon. I was raised on so many of her films, everything from Misery to Fried Green Tomatoes to Delores Claiborne, all films that I've watched multiple times and been inspired by.

I want to live where I want to live, and I will make films because I love to make films.

Women sometimes really love to look at other beautiful women on the screen. But they don't look at a woman the way a man looks at a woman. They want to be that woman. They like if a woman is beautiful or sexy, especially if she's powerful. They like to see her catch a man, or to be powerful in the world. I think this is why a lot of women love noir films and classic films because they can really identify with these really strong, beautiful women. That's the kind of power that women have lost culturally.

I think all writers of my age who are brought up on films probably by the age of 16 have seen many more films than they have read classics of literature. We can't help but be influenced by film. Film has got some great tricks that it's taught writers.

All the films are hits before you turn the camera on. It's only in the execution that they fail. I've been less than happy with the way a couple of films were edited, but it's a director's prerogative and you gotta go with it.

What I'm really focused on is the majesty of the best films I see are films that don't panhandle for an extra laugh later, but actually deliver the goods. And when the screen goes black, you go, Yes.

It's easier to greenlight your own films when you're not surrounded by other people aspiring to make films. You have to work a little harder and rely more on yourself and your collaborators and the real relationships you have. There are so many hypotheticals that dominate the industry, and everyone's always waiting for someone else to tell them when to make a film and write a check and sign the talent.

I don't do films because they tell a particular kind of story, I do films with stories that touch me.

Generally Canadian films are smaller. I think the market here is a tenth of the size of the States. So there's less resources to put into the films.

I like directors that give their composer a juicy role in their films. Some films have a small, minor role for music, some have a larger role.

It's a fact, the majority of films in Hollywood are from the male perspective. And the female characters, very rarely do they get to speak to another female character in a movie, and when they do it's usually about a guy, not anything else. So they're very male-centric, Hollywood films, in general. So I think it's incredible that Ned Benson, when I said I'd love to know where she goes, says okay, I'm going to write another film from the female perspective.

I'm no longer interested in making political films. There's something old-fashioned about them. Young people now don't care for politics. It isn't present in life as it used to be. And increasingly I like films which reflect present-day reality.

I was making films when I was about 12 years old - Super-8 films.

I come from the belief that all good films find their time whether it's on opening week or sometime later. That's certainly true with some of my favourite films that might relate to this [The Assassination of Jesse James] film in terms of cadence like Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid, or McCabe & Mrs Miller or Days of Heaven. I found them 10 to 20 years after they were made.

I do like musical films more than big Hollywood films, especially those by Jacques Demi and Vincent Minelli.