Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Learning to make films is very easy. Learning what to make films about is very hard. What you’ve really got to do is focus on learning as much about life, and about various aspects of it first.
There should be a point to movies. Sure, you're giving people a diversion from the cold world for a bit, but at the same time, you pass on some facts and rules and maybe a little bit of wisdom.
'Hollywood Don't Surf!' is really about how Hollywood's superficial view of surfing culture has influenced popular culture and the story of what happened when real surfers tried to change that.
With every movie I produce, I learn something. I watch the directors. It's like the relationship you have with your children. I'm there to learn from my daughters. They are the perfect spirits.
I have "fat-guy syndrome." If they give me $50 million to make a movie, I'll try to make it look like it cost a hundred. If they give me $60 million, I'll try to make it look like it cost $120.
All my films are about kind of being seen to be one thing when you're actually something else, and the power of the female spirit to make things work your way on your terms. Which is what I do.
It’s not a requirement to eat animals, we just choose to do it, so it becomes a moral choice and one that is having a huge impact on the planet, using up resources and destroying the biosphere.
There's a level of immersion that is perfect and there's a level that, for my taste, starts to actually exceed what the screen can provide. At that point, you're kind of overexceeding yourself.
Sometimes I would like the opportunity to do character-driven comedy and that's really what I was trying to do in Meet The Parents. I think in a way this is a more old fashioned type of comedy.
When we did the first sequel [of the Austin Powers] , it was on coattails of the first one doing so well when it was released on video, so we really didn't know what to do with the second plot.
Objects exist and if one pays more attention to them than to people, it is precisely because they exist more than the people. Dead objects are still alive. Living people are often already dead.
So I've always been kind of an apocalyptic kind of kid, and looking back at the movies I've done, there's some kind of apocalypse in them. So that must be what scares me... besides Republicans.
It's like being at the kids' table at Thanksgiving - you can put your elbows on it, you don't have to talk politics... no matter how old I get, there's always a part of me that's sitting there.
When I think of high school, stills are so important: it's all about the wallet with the kids - they define themselves with pictures, who they know, whose pictures they have. Yearbook pictures.
I want people to leave the theater wrestling with the idea that our pain - physical, emotional, and spiritual pain - is more than just a condition that needs to be silenced, numbed, or "fixed."
I'd like to be making more films more frequently, but I do find that making movies, for me, has proven to be an extremely challenging road. No movie is easy; no movie has come together quickly.
Everything was a constant battle. My first film was beautiful. I got an amazing cast. That worked out great. Everything else was like murphy's law. Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong.
There was no glam squad, whatsoever. There were no dressing rooms. There were no bathrooms. Let's start at our base level. We didn't have toilet paper. We went to the woods to use the bathroom.
It took me 30 years to figure out who I really am, as a person, and who I want to surround myself with. I was very much the kind of person who would just meld in with whatever group I was near.
I think it's important that we all try to give something to this medium, instead of just thinking about what is the most efficient way of telling a story or making an audience stay in a cinema.
For 'Toy Story 3' to be recognized by the Academy as not only one of the best animated films of the year, but also as one of the 10 best pictures of the year, is both humbling and overwhelming.
Trying to make something as tricky as 'Room' really believable is extremely hard, and it largely rests with that relationship between the actors and the director, and the director and the crew.
I am fairly optimistic about the disillusionment that produces homogeneity in general. The films that succeed in [theaters] are fairly homogeneous in terms of narrative and vision of the world.
Everything starts with writing. And then to support your vision, your ideas, your philosophy, your jokes, whatever, you've gotta perform them and/or direct them, or sometimes just produce them.
I don't need a psychiatrist. I can sort out my fears with my work. That's the privilege of all artists, to be able to sort out their unhappiness and their neuroses in order to create something.
In terms of cinema and filmmaking, there are certainly the unexpected gifts that the actors bestow on you. Film is always a question of compromises with respect to what you originally intended.
We bring our preparation to the table, and opportunity may present itself, and if you are well prepared, you can seize opportunity and then maybe something good happens, and you call that luck.
In my opinion, it's more interesting to see magic happening in a world that feels grounded. If the world is already crazy, then anything can happen. So it's better to start with something real.
It's only human and natural that an actor should see the film in terms of his own part, but I, as a director, have to see the film as a whole. He must therefore collaborate selflessly, totally.
Some people need a red carpet rolled out in front of them in order to walk forward into friendship. They can't see the tiny outstretched hands all around them, everywhere, like leaves on trees.
This pain, this dying, this is just normal. This is how life is. In fact, I realize, there never was an earthquake. Life is just this way, broken, and I am crazy for dreaming of something else.
The thing I am most interested in is power relations - it is so easy in a relationship like that [of an artist and a gallery manager], to imagine that the other person is living a perfect life.
From my films, you can at least learn about Iran, you can get a sense of the history and the society. But no such films have been made about Afghanistan, so you really can't know much about it.
Why should a horror film be just a horror film? To me, The Company of Wolves is a fairy tale; it's got all those elements plus a lot more. And we know that fairy tales aren't innocent any more.
But for me, it feels like a natural extension of what I've been doing: exploring relationships. Here you have two relationships and we can explore how difficult it is for people to be together.
If I wanted to make something that actually made a difference roughly in this industry, I would make a documentary. That would be the closest I could come to actually try and make a difference.
I've been trying to get away from physical violence; it's too easy; it doesn't satisfy me artistically to work with it. Dramatic violence is much more interesting, but it's much more difficult.
God knows nobody hated running more than me. Because I was writing and rewriting the script, I thought that I'm going to have to run because I'm going to have to know what it feels like to run.
I've been having a lot of fun exploring different aspects of filmmaking, like writing and producing. There isn't a specific plan and I usually don't know what's going to be the next thing I do.
The one thing that's closest to my story is the thing about trying out for the juvenile delinquent role and getting it. That was the start of my acting career... which I've resumed, by the way.
I love 3D, and I'm very upset about the way it's being treated and thrown away by Hollywood in this kind of horrible grab for the money with all these bad 3D movies and terrible 3D conversions.
I don't want to imitate life in movies; I want to represent it. And in that representation, you use the colors you feel, and sometimes they are fake colors. But always it's to show one emotion.
We all want happiness in our life. I mean, there are so many books on, like, how to be happy and what you need for happiness, and you want that for your kid, too; you want your kid to be happy.
There have been innumerable films about film-making, but Otto e Mezzo was a film about the processes of thinking about making a film -- certainly the most enjoyable part of any cinema creation.
When you're starting out, you know, you have to do something on a very limited budget. You're not going to be able to have great actors, and you're most likely not going to have a great script.
Here in Central Texas, you drive west, you get the desert; you drive east, you get the woods; you've got water, you've got urban environments, you've got country. So you can hit a lot of notes.
Wisdom and love have nothing to do with each other. Wisdom is staying alive, survival. You're wise if you don't stick your finger in the light plug. Love - you'll stick your finger in anything.
The basic premise of this is that, yes, people have learned to clone each other, but that cloning is illegal. Not that it's bad, just that the law as it is now, is that if you die, you're dead.
I would personally not run down any cinema just because I am not capable of making it. Anurag Kashyap makes a certain kind of cinema; I make a different kind. But when we meet, we are friendly.
I simply wanted to state that during this little slice of history, this is what happened and these were the good sides of it, these were the more dangerous sides of it, and this was the result.