Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I love strong women.
I like to keep a calm set.
Film has its own innate poetry.
For me, all drama is based on conflict.
It's such an intense thing to make a film.
What I like is finding new angles on genres.
I love 'Alien' and 'Blade Runner' and '2001.'
I love working with ensemble groups of actors.
The last time I played video games was 'Space Invaders.'
'The Road' reminds me of Steinbeck's 'The Grapes of Wrath.'
I've learned a lot about getting film sensibilities on digital.
It's the murkiness of humanity that I find endlessly fascinating.
I think the environment is the biggest threat mankind has ever faced.
I like restraint. Even with actors, restraint is something that I work on the most.
Basically, I frittered away the Nineties making pop videos and being pretty self-indulgent.
I take very seriously that challenge of trying to do genre films - but elevated genre films.
Unfortunately, I've seen violence, and I think, in films, it is the dramatic extremity of it.
I do love genres, but I love finding new ways into the genre, or making that world fresh again.
There is a capacity for violence we all harbour, and under certain circumstances, it comes out.
I have very mixed feelings about big corporations. Oftentimes, they're more troublesome than not.
For all the spectacle of CGI, there's something alien and unreal about that domain, like a videogame.
It's not awards per se that bother me; it's entirely to do with the impetus they give for marketing a film.
What's amazing about 'White Heat' is that, even for its time, it's very truthful in the way it deals with violence.
It's great to make strong, powerful films, but in terms of people wanting to finance them, it's also very difficult.
I kept hearing about this incredible guy called Tom Hardy. I started watching his work, and I was awestruck - he was amazing.
Social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter - I steer away from them. They're alienating us socially as well as bringing us together.
I consider myself a humanist. Even if I do very dark worlds, I try to make those characters real humans as opposed to just cartoons.
Bands are actively seeking more film involvement - because the days of recording albums and MTV and even touring, to some extent, are gone.
I love those sorts of stories where you actually see the consequences of what violence does physically to people as well as psychologically.
Radiohead showed a real affinity to being bold with visual imagery, so it came as no surprise when Jonny Greenwood did 'There Will Be Blood.'
The Globes are voted for by anyone in L.A. who's ever written for a foreign newspaper or magazine. That means, like, Romanian cookery writers.
I like the realism of anti-heroes. It's a healthy thing. I think heroes can be very unhealthy at times because it doesn't connect you to reality.
I personally found 'Avatar' - the blue people, to me, looked like painted art from the seventies. It didn't have the realism as, say, the robotic machines.
I'm actually a humanist, believe it or not, and I believe even when people are corrupted, even when they've gone to the dark side, they are still human beings.
The one that I've always wanted - and I have Scott Rudin in my way blocking it - is 'Blood Meridian,' which Cormac McCarthy has offered to adapt into a screenplay.
I've realized I've become a bit reactive to each film I do. After 'The Road,' I was desperate to do something that had color and warmth to it and a stronger sense of community.
Fear shuts off possibilities. The first thing that kicks in when you're reacting with fear... This is what I love about Roosevelt's quote, "There's nothing to fear but fear itself."
Any way you want to slice it, the thing about the apocalypse is, since the beginning of time, it's the projection of mankind's worst fear. The day that, as a race, our number is up.
When you have a major movie star, and then they're surrounded by local extras, it takes me out or makes me more conscious of what's going on, as opposed to losing myself in the movie.
I think what actors have to do, what performers have to do to emotionally get to that place and have a camera and have your face 20 feet high on a screen, is such an incredible thing.
There are so many tricks and so much eye candy in cinema. What I love about the classicism of genre is that there's a discipline. I think it's a healthy thing to resist all that candy.
What was so amazing and inspiring about 'GoodFellas' was that it showed the foot soldiers; the people more at the bottom as opposed to focusing on the godfathers and the guys at the top.
In Australia in the '70s, there was a real embrace of different genres. And then George Miller did 'Mad Max' by the end of the '70s, the beginning of the '80s. And it was really thriving.
I like to do commercials that are more than just flogging a product. It needs to have something to say. It's always an opportunity for a director to say something substantial and interesting.
What irritates me about sci-fi is that it got hijacked by video games and also became so high-concept it was all about ideas and gadgets and technology and nothing about the human experience.
Everyone has a family, even if they're at war or fallen apart. It's the closest initial bond, and there's a sort of primal element to that. Your primary relationships are formed out of family.
Certain films, when shot digitally, the detail is like CG: you can't feel the sweat. I feel like digital is alienating. There's something superficial to digital compared to the richness of film.
I always try and find a place for Guy Pearce. The great thing about him is he's so versatile, and I wouldn't work with an actor that much if it weren't for the fact that he had so much versatility.
I love the sci-fi movies where it's from the point of view of humans in that situation... When it becomes too clever in its ideas, the cyber-punk, high-tech thing, it becomes more about something else.
I think it's human nature that if we don't have our own family, we will create a family, because it's human nature, and it's that element of trust and dependency and love and all of those sort of things.