Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
All of those years, I felt like 'Heaven's Gate' was a beautiful, fantastically colored balloon tied to a string fastened to my wrist, so the balloon could never fly.
I've got a room full of scripts. They go to the ceiling. I can't even hardly walk into it anymore. Most are original, and there are some adaptations like 'Man's Fate.'
I was a child prodigy. Like Michelangelo, who could draw a perfect circle at age five. I was extremely gifted. I could paint a perfect portrait of someone at age five.
Family politics are worse than world politics. That's all I can say. You don't get to choose your family; you get to choose your friends. Your family is imposed upon you.
'Leaving Las Vegas' is a relationship; 'Dead Man Walking' is a relationship, and they're very contained movies. They're compressed and not in wide open spaces all over the place.
I wish I was making movies back in the days when John Ford made movies and you were a director under contract to a studio. John Ford had years when he made three movies in a year.
It's very important to follow your instincts because, beyond what you know exists or what you're told exists in a given area, your intuition plays a big part in finding something special.
A film reflects who you are as a building reflects the soul of its architect. I think what you feel and what you think and what you are is what the film is. It's not for me to talk about.
I don't dispute the accounts of My Lai 4, but I think that anyone who is a student of the war, or anyone who was there, would agree that anything you could imagine happening probably happened.
Every good war film, if you want to use that phrase - I don't think it's a good phrase, but if you want to use that phrase - every good film, a first-rate film about war, is an anti-war movie.
We all want to experience that in our lives - a moment when we're two feet off the ground - and making movies gives you that opportunity. It comes and it goes so fast that it's unreal, but it does happen.
I've published a couple of short novels in France that I didn't want to publish in English because I loved the characters too much to subject them to American critics who were not exactly favorable toward my work.
Working-class, blue-collar guys who volunteered for Vietnam were ascribed certain political beliefs. It's time that this was redressed. It had nothing to do with politics. Once these men got to Vietnam, it was a matter of survival.
I would never suggest that the geography or visual environment of the film is more important than what's going on with the people, but it's a major factor in getting the right tone. Certainly, it influences the actors tremendously.
Every great movie is about the people, even if it's a great popular success like 'Gone With the Wind.' It's really not about the Civil War. It's about Scarlett and Rhett. That's who you go to see. You're not going to root for the North or pull for the South, or, you know, it's the people you remember.