Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Two heads are better than none.
A writer, by definition, is pathetic.
We haven't had to defend anything to anybody.
People respond to real problems from the heart.
'Once Upon a Time in the West' is a great movie.
Sergio Leone has this weird western opera thing.
It's very weird when people you know are in 'Star Wars.'
People are always curious about brothers working together.
Don't bang your head against the wall about what you can't do.
Whatever faith you have, you have that crisis: what am I doing?
You don't have to have a true story to make a true story movie.
It's hard to get away from being old. I still talk about the TV set.
We wouldn't have done it if we didn't think we could have fun with it.
That's interesting: people deriving their identities from their music.
Barton Fink is just too self-important as an artist to get much sympathy.
Mainstream movies used to be more adventurous because people went to them.
It's more interesting for me as an audience member to see a movie about a loser.
As kids, we did see the Disney movies and the kids' adventure stories of the day.
Whenever you're specific with ethnicity or religion, people find reason to take offence.
It's not that I don't like TV. It's alien to me. I haven't watched a television show in decades.
We tend to do period stuff because it helps make it one step removed from boring everyday reality.
It was never an ambition to grow up and win an Academy Award, so when it happens, you go, 'Weird!'
I was always interested in movies the way everyone is interested. That is, I liked to go to the movies
Oscars just ain't gonna do it for me anymore. I need the Nobel Peace Prize. The Oscars have worn off, man.
It's just an impulse, in some actors. You want to make the audience like you. That's the aim of the exercise.
I mean, Joel talks to the actors more than I do and I probably do production stuff a little more than he does.
That cowboy look - the hat and the bandana - that's not a fashion statement. That clothing is purely practical.
'Barton Fink' owed something to Roman Polanski. As a director, he always goes beyond the obvious narrative drift.
You don't go around thinking about how characters in a movie, in the stories you make up, relate to people in general.
Like any kind of writing, there are good days and frustrating days. But even frustrating days can be rewarding sometimes.
It's always tempting to cast someone you enjoy being with. You've got to hang out with these people for a number of months.
All we think about is how to keep the audience engaged, and normally we're big on plot because that's the easy way to do it.
With 'The Big Lebowski,' we were really consciously thinking about doing a Raymond Chandler story, as much as it's about L.A.
We used to watch the muscle movies on Saturday matinees, such as 'Hercules Unchained.' Then we'd go outside and do a remake of it.
'The Big Lebowski' was something we wrote for Jeff Bridges, and we set it aside for a couple of years because he wasn't available.
There aren't reasons why you like this song or this piece of music, or don't like it. It's just, it's either right or wrong, you know?
I think some superstars feel they get trapped in their established screen persona over and over again. That's what they get hired to do.
Dave Van Ronk is not an obscure figure. He's the biggest figure on an obscure scene, playing a kind of niche music that we knew and liked.
Midwestern Jews is a different community, is a different thing than New York Jews, L.A. Jews. It's just different. It's the whole Midwestern thing.
There's something strange - not in a bad way - about going back to where you grew up or recreating where you grew up. It's strange and stimulating.
I have never had feeling in my toes. My uncle, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, once told me in confidence he had the same syndrome, leading me to believe it is genetic.
It's important to tell the story you're telling in the right way, which might involve black people or people of whatever heritage or ethnicity - or it might not.
The mountain music... is compelling music in its own right, harking back to a time when music was a part of everyday life and not something performed by celebrities.
In 'True Grit,' we had a vulture, a trained vulture... that was a pain and that was - even by vulture standards - probably a stupid vulture, and that was frustrating.
We don't outline, so we don't have prospective tasks to divide up. It's just, we start at the beginning and talk the first scene through, write it up, proceed to the next.
Critics are usually kinder to cheaper movies than to those they perceive to be big Hollywood releases. They cut you a lot more slack if you spend less money, which makes no sense.
When you're younger, you kind of assume you'll be fine at whatever. Then you get older, and you're either unsuccessful and you wonder why, or you're successful and you wonder why.
We loved the language in Cormac McCarthy's 'No Country,' which is really about the region, while in 'True Grit' it's more about period: people did speak more formally and floridly.
When the movie's done, you talk about either the score or source music over a particular scene, what might work. You just throw a piece of music over the scene, and we both listen to it.
What is striking in Minnesota is the invisible horizon line. On a grey day, when there's snow on the ground, the sky and the ground are one tone. Everyone appears to be hanging in mid-air.