Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I think you just have to turn it around and say we are at this absolute historical moment. No generation has ever been as powerful as us. We have the future of our species in our hands. We could be the generation that people look back on and say, 'They bloody did it!', not 'They didn't bother.'
I grew up on EC comic books and 'Tales From the Crypt,' which were all loaded with humor, bad jokes, and puns. I can have that kind of fun and make these comic book movies but, at the same time, talk about things I want to talk about - whether it's consumerism or the Bush administration or war.
All of my films have been very hard to understand at the script stage because they're very different. At the time I did them they were not conventional. The executives could only think in terms of what they'd already seen. It's hard for them to think in terms of what has never been done before.
Oh my God, I love UCLA so much. Their film school is great because it's unstructured, so there's a freedom to fail in there and just tell your story, and everybody makes a film. It's so important to have that freedom in film school because that's what you're there for: to learn and make a film.
Flying through a hurricane is the most fearsome shaking you will ever get. Everything has to be tied down in the airplane. And the IMAX camera has to be rock-steady through all this. We had to design special mounts on the left and right sides of the cabin and in the cockpit to hold the cameras.
Filmmaking in general is about feeling and not about theory. You need to know a lot of rules about filmmaking: character development, grammar, and all these thing, but then you use it instinctively. I ask myself this question all the time. I have no solid theory, I just do what I feel is right.
It's hard to believe that these self-centered people have nuclear weapons that they can fire at any moment. Even modern wars are fought like revenge tales from some petty grievance. It was definitely tapping into the Dr. Strangelove vibe, which is one of my three top favorite films or all time.
The Screen Directors Guild was organized solely by and for the motion picture director... We are not anti-anything: The Guild being formed for the purpose of assisting and improving the director's work in the form of a collective body, rather than as an individual, as was necessary in the past.
My fear in converting it to 3-D is that people will say, 'Oh, it's the 3-D 'Clash of the Titans.' No, it's 'Clash of the Titans,' the movie, and then, on top of that, you have the 3-D conversion. The 2-D movie works as well as the 3-D movie. I want to make sure that people like the 2-D version.
George Saunders is the funniest. He makes me laugh in the way I want to laugh - with so much empathy and deep understanding of people. He illuminates things and people I've never thought about - and I've dedicated my life to the study of people and their idiosyncrasies. He is light years ahead.
I always wanted to create this community that would come and tell their own story, shoot it - and watch them. The idea is to not have one entity who creates the work, the project, and another entity who consumes it; the idea is people create their own work, like somebody cultivating his garden.
The photographer in Blow-Up, who is not a philosopher, wants to see things closer up. But it so happens that, by enlarging too far, the object itself decomposes and disappears. Hence there's a moment in which we grasp reality, but then the moment passes. This was in part the meaning of Blow-Up.
Somewhat predictably, I'm much more comfortable in front of an audience - and a big audience is even better - than faced with one stranger. This always seems like a bit of a failing on my part, as a human. I think that's also why I put myself situations where I'm forced to engage in other ways.
Being part of a team helped me so much. I know the fact that there was a man in the room with me all those years made the medicine go down. I had made the companies money. I didn't have to start, like a lot of women, from ground zero. My path was not the same as a woman starting out by herself.
Whatever the regulations are, you can be as dark and disturbing as you want and we're going to go in that direction. The intention is to be as dark and scary as possible with the show. And that was our whole kind of plan going in, to make it scary. So we're going to explore all kinds of things.
I think I'm a good writer. I think I have my own voice, which is unique to everyone - everyone has their own voice; if they would just write from a vulnerable embarrassing place, it's going to be universal, and it's going to be entertaining. Because everyone is the same, and everyone is unique.
I'm a very collaborative person, so that's not the way I work any way. Once VW got over the idea that I was going to blow their cars up, then we shot the thing really fast and it came out really good. Like I said, it won a bunch of awards and that really was the start of working in commercials.
For a lot of us, awareness is merely realizing the extent to which we've been lied to all our lives. You start educating yourself. You become motivated; you follow your muse where it takes you. And you see the world in a different way. You start making decisions based on what you feel is right.
When 'Apollo 13' appeared as an opportunity and I began to tackle that in as authentic a way as I possibly could, I really became enthralled by the philosophical side of space travel and why we need to explore - what it means to us here on Earth - all of those things. I became a huge proponent.
Show me one director who does not get angry on their assistant for something that has gone wrong. But it is done out of my love. It's just fun when I tell them to face a wall and stand or kneel down in a corner. It's not like I want to punish them harshly. It's not to humiliate; it is to teach.
Just go to Disneyland. You have the impact of how the Americans think, how they dream, what they desire, how they have a good time, what they prefer. I associate this with young people. But many times I think this infantile quality is much better than the false, incomplete concept of adulthood.
Comedy is so subjective. You could be in a room with 400 people laughing at a joke and you could just not think it's funny. You're just sitting there like, 'Am I in the twilight zone? Why is everyone laughing?' It's such a personal thing. People have such a personal visceral response to comedy.
A lot of documentaries have been made very quickly, but I think they're like frogs in an ecosystem: They're harbingers. Film is always two or three years behind, because it takes so long to write a script, get financing, and get it made. It just takes a while. But I think it's coming. It has to.
The power of music is still with me, every day. It's one of the most inspiring things available in the world. I write with music. I write scenes in movies that hopefully can earn the use of some songs that are powerful to me. But, I think it just came from being affected by strong, personal art.
I'll literally pay three Hollywood readers who don't know me to read my scripts under the radar and give cold comments. And at the early screenings of my movies, I'll hand out questionnaires that can be filled out anonymously so people can be brutally honest because, to your face, they won't be.
You write a screenplay and then everybody is going to want to get in on it and we have to figure that out. I've written three screenplays that are at studios and I still haven't been making them yet so there is always something that is either going to trip something up or maybe get another pass.
I like people who, you know, as you go along in life, you know, a thing happens, and people become a seeker. They look for something to give them the path to their full potential. I like them to know about transcendental mediation, but they've got to make up their own mind to take it and use it.
The audience has a level of control, when you watch 'Invisible,' that nothing in 2D can give you. The overall climax of the series will work no matter how you get there, and the climax of each episode will work no matter how you get there, but no two viewings of an episode will ever be the same.
If you look at my movies, they're pretty densely packed, such that they not only hold up to a second viewing, they're oftentimes better the second time you watch them. So I've always thought about crafting stories that could hold up to multiple viewings, and so VR obviously fits right into that.
I've always wanted to make a big apocalypse movie. I love 28 Weeks Later, I think it's great but Cell is totally different. It's about people's dependence on technology, the collapse of society and watching everything fall apart. That's something I've always wanted to do, which I believe it can!
I like to take risks and do weird things and stuff that's not normal compared to other Hollywood movies. Not stuff that's totally avant garde and daring, but doing stuff that's in other languages and not using stars and using real people - things that they generally don't do in mainstream films.
I love using unique names, so I go to a baby names site on the Internet and use the unique names. Sometimes my names have meanings such as 'strong', 'fire', and Phoenix which means dark red and is Greek. It's fun to think of a name meaning and matching it with a name. Even Frances means Victory.
If you want to make pictures and enjoy making them, you better go out and make something that a lot of people want to see. And then they'll turn you lose and let you make what you want. And then maybe you can do some of the things that you want to do. But as a beginner, you haven't got a chance.
If you can laugh with somebody and relate to somebody, it becomes harder to dehumanize them. I think that most of what we are constantly bombarded with in terms of media leads you to a creation of 'the Other' and a dehumanization of 'the Other,' and it's very much an us-versus-them conversation.
Well, 'They Live' was a primal scream against Reaganism of the '80s. And the '80s never went away. They're still with us. That's what makes 'They Live' look so fresh - it's a document of greed and insanity. It's about life in the United States then and now. If anything, things have gotten worse.
I hate it when people say, I'm an artist. I think, well, I'll be the judge of that. And I don't think artist is a job description. It's a critique, a favorable critique, that someone else might apply to your work. I guess in the art world I'm not exactly a photographer, but I do use photography.
Its true, Im the youngest, highest-grossing French director. I have a few records, but no one knows or simply doesnt care. Thats good, because I like that. Ultimately, I want to keep working, making a lot of movies, and get better at it. Its about finding great scripts and bringing them to life.
I think 'Cyrus' has a lot of fat in it. It was a $7 million movie. If you're going to make a movie with famous people, you don't necessarily need to spend 7 million dollars. Make it for less than that, and you'll be able to sell it and make a ton more than that, and everybody shares the profits.
When I first envisioned 'Funny Games' in the mid-1990s, it was my intention to have an American audience watch the movie. It is a reaction to a certain American cinema, its violence, its naivety, the way American cinema toys with human beings. In many American films, violence is made consumable.
I'm just thinking of 2001, which I think is the most expensive independent film ever made - which is great, someday I hope I will do one. But I know the parameters when I got onto this project - I have to take care of everyone, make sure that they are all on board, and this process interests me.
In the end, we're just showmen. But, I think that it's an important factor. Not to be anything else but clear about that - for me, creativity is an important part of our evolution. Art has probably done more good for the world than war. But they're equally powerful. They both create revolutions.
I think your 20s are the hardest part of life. I mean, everyone goes on about how hard it is to be a teenager, but actually I think it’s tougher to be in your 20s because you’re expected to be a grownup and expected to earn your own living and be successful and I think you feel like a kid still.
I think your 20s are the hardest part of life. I mean, everyone goes on about how hard it is to be a teenager, but actually I think it's tougher to be in your 20s because you're expected to be a grownup and expected to earn your own living and be successful and I think you feel like a kid still.
Cannes is a sort of gladiators' arena, and that's the fun part of it. When you accept to come here to open the festival, you know you are going to be criticised. I have no problem with the fact that I expose myself and the movie, and it's normal that I can disagree with the way some people feel.
I've seen a lot of political violence in my life. I know what it looks like. I know what it smells like. I know what motivates young men to do it. I've talked to them about it. I know what victims feel like, you know? I know the abominable effect it has on politics. I know how intractable it is.
My movies more often are told through pictures, not words. But in this case, the pictures took second position to the incredible words of Abraham Lincoln and his presence [...] I was less interested in an outpouring of imagery than in letting the most human moment of this story evolve before us.
What it boils down to is that when you say the word Las Vegas it means something. You could say New York City and it doesn't really mean anything. When you say a word like Bangkok, in my mind it means something. There's not a lot of cities where the world literally brings a picture to your mind.
I still find it interesting that there could be a point between a young guy and a girl when they decide to hold hands as they walk down the block. At some point, they decide to make the leap from pushing and insulting each other to doing something tender and possessive and showing the world that.
My hope is that I'm going to continue to make more and more challenging work that's going to come out more and more interesting. I don't know if that will always continue to happen, but every one of my films has definitely been a progression as far as complexity of narrative, character, and plot.
You don't dive for specific solutions; you dive to enliven that ocean of consciousness. Then your intuition grows and you have a way of solving those problems-knowing when it's not quite right and knowing a way to make it feel correct for you. That capacity grows and things go much more smoothly.