Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Ultimately, the people [who] are going to help you make your film are the people who believe in you and believe in the story. And as long as you stick to your guns, hopefully what you come out with will be what you imagined.
When you're trying to come up with an idea for a movie it's actually the hardest part - the germ of the idea. Inevitably you think of something that would be great and then discover that it was on an episode of The Simpsons.
I am hopeful that there are three or four Harvey Milks. It would be nice to have one in California and one in New York and one in Texas and Oklahoma-it would be fantastic. Maybe even one in Salt Lake City. I would like that.
I've long believed that anybody who is in the act of remembering childhood is a poet, because you're thinking back on times when you were making false models of the universe. Everything is kind of irrational and poetic then.
Everybody who labels themselves a 'nerd' isn't some giant person locked in a cubbyhole who's never seen the opposite sex. Especially with the way the Internet is now, I think that definition is getting a little more diffuse.
Making 'The Avengers' was very important to me, but it was also extremely arduous. I missed my friends and I missed my home, so I decided to throw them all on camera, which is the only way I seem to know to relate to people.
Wearing one hoop earring and playing with the androgyny - that's who I am. That's what I like to do. And I feel the world should see that. I'm not going to put a shield up or be more feminine to make people feel comfortable.
When people think of the South Side of Chicago, they don't think about where I'm from. It was sort of a pocket: this idyllic community of black people who took care of each other, knew each other, spent time with each other.
That was, in writing the 'Twilight' script I had about five weeks to write that. I'd taken about a month to write the outline and then it was slam into a script and write it down fast because the writer's strike was looming.
They literally have what they would call "a four-quadrant" movie that they could just release at any moment. Parents want to go there, kids want to go there, hipsters want to go there. It's like everyone will want to see it.
The movies I've made, I'm really proud of them. But the experience I've had is, people say to me, 'Oh my God, I saw your movie on HBO. It was actually funny.' Like, that's always the experience. It's a backhanded compliment.
All my life I've felt like somebody's wife, or somebody's mother or somebody's daughter. Even all the time we were together, I never knew who I was. And that's why I had to go away. And in California, I think I found myself.
It has forever been thus: So long as men write what they think, then all of the other freedoms - all of them - may remain intact. And it is then that writing becomes a weapon of truth, an article of faith, an act of courage.
I was very much raised by my grandmother, who actually was Bette Davis - looked like her, acted like her, talked like her. Probably, it was just out of my love and affection for my grandmother that I was interested in Bette.
For me, the saddest thing in the world is always lost potential. That is always the most heartbreaking thing, when there's something left to be mined from a situation or a person that goes unexplored; that's a tragedy to me.
At some point, you have to make a decision. Boundaries don't keep other people out. They fence you in. Life is messy. That's how we're made. So, you can waste your lives drawing lines. Or you can live your life crossing them
I don't know that I think women have to throw out the fairy tale ending. I just think they have to decide what their fairy tale ending is - and not go with the standard one that everyone's told them they're supposed to have.
It's rare in Hollywood to get the chance to work on something that you actually care about. The tragedy of the place is all these talented people trying to get excited about stuff they themselves would only view at gunpoint.
Part of the reason for doing 'Peaky Blinders,' apart from the fact that it was a personal story and I've always wanted to do it, was what was great I felt is that Birmingham is probably the least fashionable city in Britain.
Storytelling is the only studio movie where the censorship is perfectly clear, the only studio movie with a big red box covering up a shot. I take pride in that - and, of course, in having avoided the fate of Eyes Wide Shut.
I discovered early in my movie work that a movies never any better than the stupidest man connected with it. There are times when this distinction may be given to the writer or director. Most often it belongs to the producer.
Public and private funds have been thrown around like confetti at a country fair, to close up and destroy clinics, hospitals, and scientific research laboratories which do not conform to the viewpoint of medical associations.
I only eat meat, if I go to a nice restaurant and there is an exceptional dish, or if I'm at somebody's home for a dinner, I'll eat whatever is in front of me. Otherwise, I don't eat anything that walks around and has a face.
I hate a movie that will end by telling you that the first thing you should do is learn to love yourself. That is so insulting and condescending, and so meaningless. My characters don't learn to love each other or themselves.
For kids who are struggling, who are of faith, just reconciling yourself to the fact that God loves you, accepts you for who you are, is a big step in the healing, especially when your biological family is unaccepting of you.
If I can go three grandmothers back and find a slave, that means someone else can go three grandmothers back and find a slave owner. When you interrogate your histories, it forces you to rethink who you are and where you are.
We just really wanted Hit-Girl to be a character who, in a sense, simply happens to be an 11-year-old girl, in the same way that Ripley in 'Alien' could have been a guy, but the part happened to be played by Sigourney Weaver.
Anything can be good. Even Last Action Hero could've been good. There's an idea somewhere in almost any movie : if you can find something that you love, then you can do it. If you can't, it doesn't matter how skilful you are.
If something isn't working, if you have a story that you've built and it's blocked and you can't figure it out, take your favorite scene, or your very best idea or set-piece, and cut it. It's brutal, but sometimes inevitable.
Saw' was a film that James Wan and I came up with back in Australia and we were just hoping anyone, literally, anyone would make that film and if nobody would give us the money we were going to shoot it in a garage somewhere.
I think, what happened with 'Dead Silence' is that other people told us that we should be doing that and now that I look back, I realize, 'should' is not a word that comes into an art. It's whatever you're feeling like doing.
I've known I was gay since I was young, I think. And I mean young - like, young - like 5 or 6. I think most gay people or queer people know there's something different about them very early, but I didn't know what to call it.
I'm an affluent screenwriter and all that - I'm a known screenwriter, but I'm not in the fraternity of the very, very major people. I would say a guy like Ernie Lehman, William Goldman, and a few others are quite a cut above.
The major difference frequently is in time. The motion picture, for example, gives you considerably more freedom of expression than does the confined thirty-minute television show. But in essence, they're not that dissimilar.
The other thing being at UCLA was just being in California and around the movie business. Which I honestly believe, and I've told this to screenwriters, you have to do. You have to be there in order to write or direct movies.
'Steve Jobs' is my seventh movie. I believe, if you added them up, I don't think there is more than a total of 10 minutes that takes place in a person's home. They're all in offices, courtrooms, laboratories, things like that.
For some reason, people with comedy, any time they can detect a pattern, it kind of freaks them out. 'Those guys are always together!' Yeah, they're a comedy team. Anything they can recognize as a pattern they think is a hole.
Every time I started going in the direction of thinking how it might turn out, I started to just turn my brain around and not go there, because I think the surest way to guarantee that you won't win is to assume that you will.
If you write an original, it's like you went in and dug a well, and you hit oil. But an adaptation, it's like the oil well's on fire, and they bring you in to put the fire out and get it working again - or something like that.
I mean, as you start to scratch the surface - and that's what I think the intent of these films are. Here's a little bit of something if you're interested go read about it and it's a little bit more fascinating. It kind of is.
The chief internal enemies of any state are not spies nor saboteurs nor the paid agents of foreign governments. They are, on the contrary, those myriads of public officials who betray the trust imposed upon them by the people.
The most useless job in the world is that of the critic. That is a prejudiced statement. I admit it. I'm prejudiced. I hate critics. ... And now, as the saying goes (yesterday, I couldn't even spell critik), and now I are one.
I would say it's not as hard as writing, because when you're a writer, you walk right into the pit all by yourself, but when you're a director, there are at least 80 people who scream, 'Don't do that!' when you make a mistake.
People feel removed from sexism. 'I'm not a sexist, but I'm not a feminist.' They think there's this fuzzy middle ground. There's no fuzzy middle ground. You either believe that women are people or you don't. It's that simple.
I think of events like the Challenger and 9/11 - events that move us so much that we never quite get over them. So it's important to go back and relive those feelings in order to remember how important those events were to us.
I don't think that my job requires me to be competitive at all. I'm in my office by myself, or I'm in my writers' room with my people. I've chosen a job in which there's no competition allowed. It's probably best for everyone.
I am never worried that I'm not gonna get my work done. I was the kid who got straight As and was a little too intense in school. Like, I am a perfectionist, and I am going to sit at the front of the class with my hand raised.
I love cooking and kitchens.It's just a great world, and I wanted to explore it. You see the façade, the outside, the public part, and then you just walk through one door marked "Staff Only" and you're in a different universe.
There's always a concern over budget with film too but people are more extravagant when they're making a feature. In television everything's tight, everything's paired down and it's just a question of making it look expensive.
You do a draft and you get more notes. You start to get the feeling that this either isn't going to happen or it is going to take a really long time to happen, and I never felt that with this [the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo].