Quotes About Films

I never worked on different films at the same time. I made one by one. I never made two or three films together. This is impossible! I only have one head. It is impossible for me to think about two films at the same time. There are a lot of these legends about me, and I don't know why. I'm not a legendary man. But the people all the time say I make three films at the same time, and it's not true. Don't believe these kinds of things.

There were a lot of people dreaming about making films, and they would finance maybe 6 films a year. Because they were funded by the government, the films sort-of had to deal with serious social issues - and, as a result, nobody went to see those films.

I don't think I make genre films. I think studios try to sell films as genres because they know how to do that. There's nothing wrong with that. I don't know what I make. It's sort of a pot roast, all my films.

I think my mom is the inspiration of me wanting to do film and TV and be an actor because she loved film so much. She loved, like, horror films and action films, so growing up, she loved watching all the Charles Bronson films and all the westerns.

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.

I've always been fascinated by horror films and genre films. And horror films harbored a fascination for me and always have been something I've wanted to watch and wanted to make.

I've directed five films and I've proven that people have made money with my films - many people have made money with my films.

The '60s in London obviously brought about the explosion of music, the Beatles especially, and then the Rolling Stones and other forms of music, and then fashion and photography and films - kitchen-sink dramas we called them at that time, which was our nouvelle vague in Britain, films that talk about real life.

If I want to be the sexy Bipasha Basu, then I'll do a song here or a glam role there. But I want to be part of films that are watched, films that earn money and are new age, with author-backed roles.

Different directors have different techniques in the use of films. Cronenberg is very different in the way he works with film, and how he takes the audience into his films is different than how Peter Jackson would do that or Jon Stewart. So, if you go between those artists, you shift gears and you kind of fall into the working method of that film.

We always have the movies that are more toward real life, but they don't have that much drama or suspense, or we have the full of drama or suspense, but they're far away from real life. Always when I was watching a film, films with good drama, I was thinking, "I wish they were more close to real life." But when I was watching real life films I was thinking, "Well I wish it had more drama." I've tried, in the movies that I worked so far, to get these two things closer and closer to each other.

Playing big films on festivals is SO misguided. And I know where it comes from: it comes from the head of the festival thinking that he'll play with the big guys, like that's the way to do it and it's SO not the way to do it. It's where Cannes went wrong, it's where Toronto is going wrong. I mean, I got off the plane in Cannes this year and the streets were paved with posters from studio movies. Who cares about that? Why come to Cannes for that? You're going to be able to see all those films anyway - you're not going to be able to avoid them, so I don't get it. Obviously.

You don't see Indians in Hollywood films around which a story can revolve. As soon as we have a social presence in your society, I am sure there will be many actors from our part of the world that will be acting in Hollywood films.

Although The Terminator is arguably the more visionary of the first two films, [Terminator 2] is the more visually and viscerally satisfying. It's an exhausting experience and, even 18 years after its release (as I write this review), few films have matched it within the science fiction genre for sheer white-knuckle exhilaration.

It is said that anyone who does commercial cinema is not acting, and anyone who does an art film is acting. I don't believe it. I feel whenever you are doing a film, you are acting. So you need to be applauded for that. I won't do art house cinemas. I want to make commercial films. I want my films to make money.

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 think one of the reasons younger people don't like older films, films made say before the '60s, is that they've never seen them on a big screen, ever. If you don't see a film on a big screen, you haven't really seen it. You've seen a version of it, but you haven't seen it. That's my feeling, but I'm old-fashioned.

If, you know, all your life you're making films or whatever, and somehow along the way you lose meaning in whatever you're doing when you're making the films, they're just not the same as they used to be to you. That doesn't mean your life is over; it just means maybe go try to live a different life.

I watch mainly fiction. The films I like watching are films where you see people change, like with Boyhood. You see a moment in someone's life where it's a breakthrough. For me, the breakthrough in Boyhood is that amazing moment right at the end when he finds somebody he can feel relaxed with, and who will maybe be a friend for the rest of his life. I like that it doesn't end in a love affair or marriage. It just ends in, "Wow, I found people I can relate to for the first people in my life. These people accept me, I like them."

You know, the art films would usually be more, I mean the exploitation movies would usually be more lurid, but not that much more. I mean, actually back in those days that was what foreign films had. They had sex, they were selling Laura Antonelli.

See, the first thing about actors is, you're just trying to get a job; and you audition and audition and you finally get them. And you still consider yourself an auditioning actor. I auditioned for One Fine Day, I wasn't offered that. So you're still in that 'Hey, I'm just trying to get a job' thing. Then, you get to the point where, if you decide to do it, then they'll make the film. That's a different kind of responsibility, and it usually takes a couple of films to catch up. And then you have to actually pay attention to the kind of films that you're making.

When I stepped out from doing films and had a dark period, I never did anything dark on a set, so I never made enemies on a set. I never was a bad girl on a set; I always considered films a really sacred space, so when I had my problems, I had them very much away from the film community.

My friends are always honest with me about films. But I really wanted to talk to regular people and kind of have a forum to interact with them; not just about films, but about everything.

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.

Independent films have a very different cachet than success films.

I don't care to analyze acting. On the other hand there is a fascination because distributors are putting out British films. You get films here with great performances you'll never see again. Why compare. We should go after the businessmen.

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.

Cult films last forever. I have been in plenty of films that no one will remember, so it is nice to be in some movies that some people do, and that they pass it along to the next generation I'm meeting kids named Ash now.

I have to tell everyone that when I finish a film and it goes out and is released, I never look at my films again. I don't like looking back. I don't even like talking about 'em! So I'm really digging back in my memory because I don't like to sit and look at my films again.

We try to make films for people [that are] the films that we'd like to see. They're not easy to get made. They're hard to get made. You have to keep the budget low to get them made. But at the end of the day, I don't really worry about competition, because I don't really think of it that way. I don't feel like I'm in a race with anybody.

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

As a kid, I couldn't articulate it but I sought out things that could. At first it was horror films - extreme panic and terror, grotesque and maniacal. These films calmed me and made me feel more connected in my experiences.

In terms of romantic films, all-time romantic films, I really like 'Gone With the Wind.' And I realize I sound so cliched saying that, but there's something so absolutely romantic about it.

I could never be Charlie Chaplin. But the films that were made by people like him, or Gene Wilder, or John Candy, the people that inspired me so much were the people that were able to combine humor with heartbreak so beautifully and fluidly. Those films I think were what inspired me to want to come to L.A. and audition for movies.

I feel like most horror films are made for teenagers about teenagers. I've done a couple of those horror films. There's nothing wrong with that but the older I get the more I starve for more adult material.

The United States and Turkey are the only two countries that don't have some kind of subsidy for the Arts. The whole culture in society has made certain films more acceptable. I turned down so many films in the '60s and '70s.

We were lucky to get Sam Jackson and Jeremy Irons and John McTiernan back. Long movie and hard movie to make and difficult for me because instead of working, my biggest concern was not repeating things I had done it in the previous films. And it rang notes in my head of episodic TV. A sequel is not a new movie; it's a chapter in a movie that you have already seen. Thank god Sam was there and thank god Jeremy was there. Again, it went outside the template of that series of films but it did well and made a ton of dough and the third chapter of a lot of sequels is always the one that falls down.

I wasn't allowed to see movies when I was a child. It was against the religion I was raised in, Fundamentalist Baptist. I didn't go into a commercial movie house until I was a senior in college, and that was on the sly. It wasn't until I was in graduate school that I immersed myself in films. Then, I went to see all the films by Bergman, Fellini, etc.

There are always at least five good films at the end of the year to get nominated, but generally speaking nowadays, it's more of the independent films that are recognized.

I was frustrated because I couldn't get going, as I was trying to figure out how to make films. I had various jobs, I taught a SAT class, I was a bartender, I had a day job at an office and was making short films.

I think the films and the paintings erase each other. The paintings are extremely slow and constantly going on in the studio - they're constantly regenerating themselves in this slow, monotonous way that's a physical struggle and can be a pain in the ass. They're all based on very specific math and diagrams. And the films, when I'm making them, are very fast, very collaborative, with a lot of improvisation.

The main reason why I'm a documentary filmmaker is the power of the medium. The most powerful films I've seen have been documentaries. Of course, there are some narrative films that I could never forget, but there are more documentaries that have had that impact on me.

What the rest of the world knows about Mexico is what they see on films and the bad news they see on TV. We need to make films that are worthy of who we really are as Mexicans. We also need to make cinema that reflects the diversity in the region, so that Americans and Europeans know who Mexicans are, who Salvadorians are, who Cubans are, etc. We need to do it, and all we really need is support because we have the talent.

There's very few people who want to just make beautiful films that make money when they can make films that make huge money.

The problem is if you play enough of parts in films that are sort of more financial products than anything or films in which the girl is a thankless, thoughtless, underwritten character along the way, you're no longer the person who had something fresh or vital to offer. I think it really does start to diminish some part of you, to put yourself through things you don't really want to be doing.

The films that I really liked and the ones that really blew my mind when I was younger were independent films. They're like great records to me.

I just remember not having access to films as a young person who loved films but living in Compton.

I'm a Lebanese woman who directs films. That's not it at all. I am not really a woman nor am I really an Arab. Because I am not an apologist for women, nor of sentimental "world" films.