You don't get to know anybody in a movie until after it's over. You work less together in a film than you do onstage.

When you produce and direct your own film you havethe somewhat consoling feeling that the producer will kill for you.

Films can only be made by by-passing the will of those who appear in them, using not what they do, but what they are.

I enjoyed every minute of directing my first film. Hopefully, I will be doing it many, many more times in the future.

(The Nutty Professor) was a labor of love. It was a total film. It was the most productive, creative work of my life.

I guess, you make a big studio film, you spend a lot of money on it and you hope people go see it. It's really risky.

The thing that's so exciting when you're making a film is that it can be anything and there are no limitations on it.

My first film as an actor was 'Fast Times at Ridgemont High,' a glorious experience that spoiled me for future films.

When I see myself on TV, it's like watching a film with Bruce Willis in it. You think it's somebody else. It's weird.

You know, independent films have been institutionalized, practically. Every studio has got a boutique arthouse label.

I always feel I could be like Toni Collette, going between big studio things and indie films. That would be feasible.

Each film I make changes me in some way. When I start the picture I'm one person and by the time I finish I'm another.

I do a film if it interests me, has a connect with the audience and some entertainment value. The rest doesn't matter.

I make a film like I cook for friends. I hope they like it, but if they don't, I'm prepared to enjoy it all by myself.

If you don't generate tension in the film to begin with... you can't really make a purse out of a sow's ear, you know.

The films that are interesting you never can stop... there's no end point, you just keep thinking and musing about it.

I don't want to have so much humor [in films] that it undermines the jeopardy, but enough to sometime relieve tension.

'How To Train your Dragon 2' is an amazing film. I think it's an extraordinary film. The animation in it is fantastic.

The more we can be honest about ourselves as filmmakers, than the more we can be honest with people who see the films.

We had been affected by the fact that the film world was a man's world in Europe as much as here, in America actually.

Composing for concert performance is a somewhat lonely occupation, but composing a film score is highly collaborative.

It's funny, I can sit through the worst horror film ever made but even a quite good romantic comedy can drive me nuts.

At the end of Requiem all I wanted to do was get a DV camera and just do a small film. But then the hunger comes back.

Hitchcock denigrated American films, saying they were all 'pictures of people talking' - as, indeed, most of them are.

Sequels are not done for the audience or cinema or the filmmakers. It's for the distributor. The film becomes a brand.

Films like Harry Potter and Narnia, I'm sure they'll do another one. The biggest audience of course is the youngsters.

Most of my films I call arena films. I deal with a confined area -- an arena -- and I try to cover every aspect of it.

You have to draw on your unconscious when you make a film - you can't worry about whether it's costing a lot of money.

I think right now television is the best that it’s ever been, and I think that it’s the worst that film has ever been.

I don't really watch many heist movies. Actually, I have quite eclectic tastes but I tend to watch just foreign films.

Watching young Afghan skaters in the film 'Skateistan' made me realize why I've spent my entire life as a skateboarder.

I don't think of Storefront Hitchcock or Stop Making Sense as documentaries, I think of them more as performance films.

If you think anyone goes out and commits crimes because of some daffy film they've seen, then I question your judgment.

When making a film, if I feel nothing in my body, I can't work. I have to touch. I have to feel. I never stop touching.

For me, acting is about the art of it and it's about being on a film set and doing your thing, painting a blank canvas.

Every time I see a film about Joan of Arc I'm convinced she'll get away with it. It's the only way to get through life.

If one looks at my choices, all of them have been unconventional. There's not a single song-and-dance or romantic film.

It never crossed my mind to make a film about Muhammad Ali or the Queen or any of them! They just come out of the blue.

As a child, people were always trying to photograph and film me because it's a way for a shy person to find themselves.

It's one of the things I love about making films: the places I've got to travel that I would never have gone to before.

Even the European critics... They said Hostel is the smartest film they'd seen on capitalism and how it's gone too far.

They're such hierarchical things, film sets, they're sort of mini societies. Often they're incredibly political places.

I never had any film training. I went to Northwestern. I studied education and theater. So it was all theater training.

I was drawn to photography as an extension of film, and the beauty of film is that it's a sensuous, fetishistic medium.

If you're making a film, the one thing I've learned is you have to pick somebody really well-known to make it relevant.

I never really make a film unless I feel like it's going to be personal and intimate, but also relevant to the audience.

I always take hundreds and hundreds of pictures. I used to work for National Geographic, and they gave us a lot of film.

The only music I've ever written was for a film called Frank, and the idea was that it was the worst music in the world.

Film is the cheapest part of the movie making process. The expense is the 100-man crew and the financing and everything.

You're constantly changing man. But the film's not changing. The film stays the same. That's the beautiful aspect of it.

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