Quotes About Films

The vampire or the bad guy, that's what people do remember. Lars von Trier, like Guy Maddin, their films are made for a group of exclusive people who like special films. And they are special films, they are art films. And I started with commercial films at the beginning, and later on, because you know, when you are an actor, you have the same cliché like everybody else, you want to be in big films, you want to be known and all that.

I've been able to make some wonderful films, but sometimes you make films with great passion - great belief - and these films slightly don't work at the box office, and they become your favorite films.

I was inspired by Maya Deren because she was the first woman filmmaker whose films I saw. I also loved Fellini and Goddard because they were so different from Hollywood films. But when I saw the cinema verite films that were made by Drew Associates with Leacock and Pennebaker I found my passion.

It's true that there are younger people making films, and there are different kinds of films. This has created some attention in what's coming out of Greece, and people like to find a way to name this new ethnic cinema. It's not like there's a movement, or a common philosophy in making these films. They're just things that happened, and now people are paying attention to it.

Filmmakers need to give the audience that something extra, an incentive to spend money and go to the multiplex - the ticket prices are high. Otherwise they'd just stay home, buy DVDs or download movies. But if there were only big budget movies it would be impossible for the film industry to survive. So I emphasize the importance of mid-range films. But those films need the support of theatre owners. The theatre chains have to have the vision to realize the need to support smaller films for the growth of the domestic film industry.

Even before the economic crisis in Greece there was no structure for making films - no proper industry, and the structure didn't help filmmakers at all. So filmmakers had to help each other, and make very, very low-budget films. Now with the crisis, things got a bit worse, but filmmakers are still going to be making films. It didn't change that much.

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.

The truth is I don't see a lot of movies. I see the Oscar films. I see the films that are sent to me and a few films throughout the year.

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 think if you look at Sam Raimi and Jim Cameron, those guys know things about filmmaking that almost nobody knows anymore. They are students of film from when they handmade films themselves, you know cut films with their own hands and razor blades and tape.

I don't rehearse films as much as opera or theatre. When I began directing films I thought a long rehearsal was a good idea. Experience showed me that the best performance was often left in a rehearsal room.

I was always raised on cowboy films, and then when I could start making choices about the movies I wanted to watch I found myself wanting to watch gangster films which were slightly more sophisticated than the baseline stuff that was in westerns.

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."

I am a hybrid. I do independent films and also do Hollywood films - I love them both.

I mean I like most of the films that I've seen that I've been in. Those are the kind of films that I like to see. Am I getting better at making choices? Well, I think I might be getting better at reading scripts. Does that make any sense?

To me some of the funniest movies would be probably categorized in the dramatic genre, and likewise some of the most dramatic films, or films that have the most dramatic moments, are in comedies.

The theater is a need for me. It's a terrible attraction, something I'm compelled to do. And one derives a form of nourishment from the theater which you can never get from films. Making films weakens you in some way. With the theater, the work itself is a regenerative process.

When I'm looking for Zen and I'm not saying this facetiously at all - I would really rather surf, scuba dive, or fly my plane. And, when I feel tension about the grind of work, it's not getting the money to make films versus making films that constitutes the grind, it's all this stuff.

Anyone can buy CG technology. It's not that it's easy to make those films. Those films are just as difficult, they're incredibly hard to make.

At this moment, everyone is in crisis, not only in Italy but all over Europe. Only in America do they make films that are successful all over the world. In Europe, production is quite poor. We have three or four or five films, which is not enough.

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.

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.

The 'human situation,' in all its guises, is what good films are all about, and technical skill counts for nothing if it is used only to manufacture films which have little to do with humanity.

I love films. I love fiction films, too. I do. I love making them, but it has to be the right one. Hopefully, I'll never become a director for hire. It's horrible to make a film that you're not really interested in.

As soon as television became the only secondary way in which films were watched, films had to adhere to a pretty linear system, whereby you can drift off for ten minutes and go and answer the phone and not really lose your place.

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 see things in a specific way. All the films are different. There are specific characters and scenes and locations and ideas. There are colors I want to see. There are movements and things ... The films are different, but the approach is the same.

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.

The moment there's a foreigner in a film it gives a novelty to the script. We make regional films and we need to hype our films.

Do you like foreign films?” “With subtitles?” “Yes.” “I hate those types of films.” “Me too,” Cliff says. “Mostly because - “ “No happy endings.

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.

I love doing short films because they're much more intimate and there's far less waiting around than on the bigger films.

I have fun making films. I love making films. It's the only thing I know how to do. And I do it well.

I define science fiction as the art of the possible. Fantasy is the art of the impossible. Science fiction, again, is the history of ideas, and they're always ideas that work themselves out and become real and happen in the world. And fantasy comes along and says, 'We're going to break all the laws of physics.' ... Most people don't realize it, but the series of films which have made more money than any other series of films in the history of the universe is the James Bond series. They're all science fiction, too - romantic, adventurous, frivolous, fantastic science fiction!

I don't think Bollywood is only mindless cinema, but a lot of films they churn out are not films that I completely enjoy watching.

There are many films I would happily spend two hours with, not so many I would spend two years with. I need to be obsessed about films, because the way I work, that means two years without sleeping at all, and losing part of your life. I need to put all of my energy and heart and soul and bones and blood and skin and muscles in the things that I do.

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 want to make good films; I don't want to make films for the moment.

It's why I get miffed at all the dashing around in recent zombie films. It completely misses the point; transforms the threat to a straightforward physical danger from the zombies themselves, rather than our own inability to avoid them and these films are about us, not them. There's far more meat on the bones of the latter, far more juicy interpretation to get our teeth into. The first zombie is by comparison thin and one dimensional and ironically, it is down to all the exercise.

Film is universal. All the countries of the world are making films. Hollywood is the only major unsubsidized center for films. To my knowledge all others are at least partially subsidized. I'm glad Hollywood isn't.

There's good art and there's bad art. A lot of action films are bad art, but Paul Greengrass showed us with the Bourne films that it's possible to make an action film with a political, social conscience.

I make American films for American audiences and Asian films for Asian audiences.

Most Chinese filmmakers grew up watching television; they watched films on television, not in cinemas. The scope of their vision is not big enough, they're not yet detail-oriented enough. You have to watch films in cinemas for years to understand the depth and scope of vision needed in filmmaking. Directors in China usually come from an academic background; they graduate as film directors. Whereas the directors from Hong Kong learn their trade on sets, beginning at the lowest rung.

The best thing about making films is the time spent making them. When I see works that I've made, I always think what a great time I had making them. The films remind me of that time.

I really think that I don't mind people sleeping during my films, because I know that some very good films might prepare you for sleeping or falling asleep or snoozing. It's not to be taken badly at all.

My films are about faith, and they're made on faith. There has to be faith because making a movie, so many things can go wrong. Me and my crew take the leap together, trusting the net will appear. I've been fortunate even though I've worked with small budgets, people have donated time and talent because they feel the films have something important to say.

I don't want to make films that give you the answer. If there is a message to my films - and I hope there isn't - it's to be open-minded.