Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I certainly believe that creativity must be an experience. If I'm to steal time away from people, we should give them something to react to.
I rarely need career advice because I don't have a career. No, that's not true. I can't really go far away while my kids are living with me.
When I was starting out I was way too scared to ask real directors how to do it or ask for advice, I'm really kind of New Zealand like that.
I made 'Whale Rider', I saw that to be specific and authentic is to be universal, and I've continued to work in an identical way ever since.
We know, from our mothers, our sisters, our daughters, our friends, that our strength comes - female strength - comes in all kinds of forms.
I come from a place that is very politically sophisticated and progressive. New Zealand was the first place to give women the right to vote.
What needs to happen is more of a global understanding, and I believe the United States can work as a global partner and not be the hegemon.
I love Philip Glass' work, not only as a film composer but also as a musician. The film score work that he does always amazes and shocks me.
I don't make films for critics, and I'm not particularly interested in what they have to say, and they don't have a bearing on my audiences.
Before shooting, I prepare with the actors much more like it's a theater play than a movie. Apparently, that way of working is very unusual.
Life is full of a thousand red herrings, and it takes the history of a civilisation to work out which are the red herrings and which aren't.
If you're an only child, you spend a lot of time by yourself, and you develop a strong ability to entertain yourself, to conjure up fantasy.
I saw an awful lot of actresses, and some of them, you thought should be hospitalized. [They] should certainly eat a hamburger, for godsake.
Everyone must decide for himself whether it is better to have a brief but more intensely felt existence or to live a long and ordinary life.
I make movies on gritty topics like crime, the underworld, and horror. I don't make movies with good-looking people in good-looking locales.
You don't really know what you're going to get until you're actually in Abbey Road. That's where I did all the music, in The Beatles' place.
I do like to make films with a political theme, but sometimes it's nice simply to make people laugh. That's the hardest thing to do in fact.
Your landscape in a western is one of the most important characters the film has. The best westerns are about man against his own landscape.
I've had it-the agencies, the winking, the networks, the ratings. Anyone who thinks TV is an art medium is crazy-it's an advertising medium.
Conventionally, one looks at history as something of the past. But after Einstein, who knows what is in the past and what is in the present?
You have to make a film and make it interesting, so you can't have a shot of you cleaning your teeth just because you did that. It's boring!
Fall in love so madly that every leaf whispers words of love to your lover. Every raindrop explodes with only one word as it hits the Earth.
Audiences aren't fools - their judgement really is important. And the true heroes of films are the investors. They take the risk, after all.
One of my daughters is a competitive jumper, we live with horses, we have stables on our property. But I don't ride. I observe, and I worry.
My dad took me to my first movie. It was 'The Greatest Show on Earth' in 1952, a movie of such scale it was actually a traumatic experience.
'The Color Purple' is the kind of character piece that a director like Sidney Lumet could do brilliantly with one hand tied behind his back.
The making of the movie and the routine of making the movie is a lot like being in a Spanish prison for five years on a marijuana breakdown.
I mean, the truth of the matter is, I like the failures as much as I like the successes, it's only the world that doesn't like the failures.
There's something about taking a classic movie that people love and doing another version of that, you're setting yourself up for a mistake.
Every commercial covers different ground, different ideas, and it's my profession to direct and to tell stories - for me, it's very organic.
The highest-caliber dramatic work produced for TV - not just in cable but something like 'The Good Wife' at network - is consistently great.
The true excitement comes from the actors - that gives you the true drama - and whatever I can do with the camera, that's icing on the cake.
You don't actually have to understand the song to be emotionally moved and uplifted, whereas with language it becomes quirky and analytical.
The beauty of Netflix is on the 28th of October they push a button and the film will be in 190 countries at the same moment in 17 languages.
I've always loved stop motion animation and I particularly wanted to do stop motion with puppets that have fur, for whatever reason that is.
One of the things I think is important about 'Watchmen' is that it have resonance within cinematic pop culture as well as superhero culture.
I think the hardest part about making a scary film is about being able to retain the mystery, especially when it comes to supernatural stuff.
I think a badly crafted, great idea for a new film with a ton of spelling mistakes is just 100 times better than a well-crafted stale script.
I believe that human beings are born first and given passports later. I'm really thankful for my journey. And it's a journey I didn't design.
If you want to keep on being relevant as a director, I think you have to embrace the times. And with the times come technologies and formats.
I think that theater is the closest medium to music. It's very pure. It's for the elite of the society. It's not for everyone in the society.
It feels very, very good to make a film freely, to work without having to wait years for script approval, without looking over your shoulder.
Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long, and in the end, it's only with yourself
The future isn't just something that happens. It's a brutal force, with a great sense of humor, that'll steamroll you if you're not watching.
It takes the wool from your eyes about how the world works, to show you that nothing's necessarily fair, and that you might have a hard life.
Hollwood creates useful entertainment. There are millions of people on earth who need distraction and American cinema fulfills that function.
The most important thing about Olympics, of course, is the games and not the opening ceremony. It's weird the way it gets inverted sometimes.
I hope that Requiem is better than Pi. I hope that Pi is better than my student films, and I'm hoping that I'm getting better as I get older.
People will say, 'There are a million ways to shoot a scene,' but I don't think so. I think there are two, maybe. And the other one is wrong.
It’s better not to know so much about what things mean or how they might be interpreted or you’ll be too afraid to let things keep happening.