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Like Godfather, you look at a movie like that, or something that James Gray has directed, a film with minimal or pin lighting as opposed to everything being lit bright and flat, where everything is evident
This film [Chi-Raq]is a declaration. It's a scream. It's a warning. And I can really break it down to one scene. That's the scene where we have the eulogy and sermon that is given by the great John Cusack.
It took 12 years to put this film [Dream of Life] together, but it was not until toward the end of those 12 years that I looked at Patti [Smith] and said, "Maybe we should do something with this footage."
A documentary film is a great way of helping people understand because, somehow, when one is able to see the people involved, it lends a certain immediacy and understanding that is hard to get on the page.
When I started out in independent films in the early 70s, we did everything for the love of art. It wasn't about money and stardom. That was what we were reacting against. You'd die before you'd be bought.
Second, this epic tale allows the audience to actually listen to the Native Americans and receive their wisdom. Spielberg conveys the respect for Native Americans that is normally lacking in Western films.
In film, it's very important to not allow yourself to get sentimental, which, being British, I try to avoid. People sometimes regard sentimentality as emotion. It is not. Sentimentality is unearned emotion.
Tyler Perry's brand is faith, family and this whole thing that I've built, while my company, 34th Street Films, is like Disney's Touchstone. We can do anything. People don't know what to expect from me yet.
I guess Titanic because it made the most money. No, I`m kidding. I don`t really have a favorite. Maybe Terminator because that was the film that was the first one back when I was essentially a truck driver.
To me, spending millions of dollars recreating the world's sadness with actors and props and sets - it seems like a kind of arrogant waste of money... Unless, that is, it's a film about an historical event.
I generally like very visually striking films. I love a lot of Stanley Kubrick's films. I would have to say 'Dr. Strangelove', which of course has got resonance in 'Watchmen'. It's a favorite movie of mine.
I think one of the hardest things to do in film or TV is to make something feel real, which is weird because it's about being a person, and life is something that everyone making films and TV can relate to.
I don't think there is really a favorite, I'm very fond of film making as a whole and as a medium and of course, there are some that I've enjoyed making more than others but I've enjoyed making all of them.
You can't intellectually purge yourself of who you are. Whatever that is, it's going to come out in the wash, the film wash. What you are is going to be relevant, if not to yourself, to the movies you make.
There was a time when I said, "I'm going to go do a television thing," after doing all these theatrical films, and heard, "Television? Why are you going to go back to television?" It's an interesting place.
A little of the sketch character Pootie Tang went a long way on HBO's now late, probably soon to be lamented 'Chris Rock Show.' So it's surprising how much fun the character's film debut, 'Pootie Tang,' is.
When something is based on an iconic film, and we found this out with "The Producers" too, you've got to pay homage to what I'd call the greatest hits. ... People expect certain lines and moments they love.
I've always believed in populating my films with characters who we like, who we have some warmth for, who have warmth for each other, who we would like to hang out with, who we emulate in one way or another.
But the truth is, at some point, our films - almost every single one of them - are really bad. And it's largely hats off to John Lasseter and Ed Catmull who have set up a system whereby they're expecting it.
I have the feeling that I didn't make it by myself, but that I was conducted by feelings that were completely different from those in my previous work. When I start making a film I don't know what I'm doing.
You make a film and always hope you're going make "Citizen Kane" or "The Bicycle Thief." You make the film, and for one reason or another, one clicks and one doesn't, but it's out of your control completely.
Whenever I think of the high salaries we are paid as film actors, I think it is for the travel, the time away, and any trouble you get into through being well known. It's not for the acting, that's for sure.
Although I feel directing is a lot more challenging, fulfilling and satisfying, it is also far more stressful & consuming. This is why I don't see myself directing one film after another in quick succession.
Reflecting on the past, where the film industry became united with 'national interest' and 'national policy,' I tend to think that keeping a clear distance from government authority is the right thing to do.
I was, and am, a frustrated filmmaker and film student, and my passion and love for movies was so broad that, in the earlier part of my career, I stumbled into doing 'Sports Night' and was a comedy director.
How my film career happened, I don't know. It was unplanned. I'd been in films and TV throughout the Sixties and early Seventies, but it was really 'The Naked Civil Servant' in 1975 that put me on the radar.
I learned that getting a movie made in Hollywood is a near impossibility, and the process can be a wild adventure. TV is a lot more consistently productive - no offense to the beautiful world of feature film.
I wasn't that much of a Disney buff growing up, but I love the mystical and magical nature of Peter Pan, and I have connected with that character through Owen [Suskind] in making this film ["Life, Animated"].
I think that cinema is a great place to make stories of loneliness. And being Norwegian, I don't want to make the film about loneliness in being out in nature on a mountaintop; it's about being in the cities.
In Berkley, they have academic studies on all genres of music including rock and jazz, but in India, we don't have serious academic research and studies on film music; it is such an interesting area of study.
I applaud Women in Film - not only for celebrating the successes of women, but for providing a safety network to mentor women and to discuss the particular issues that arise in a very male-dominated industry.
I never studied anything about film technique in school. Eventually, I realized that cinema and theater are not so different: from the gut to the heart to the head of a character is the same journey for both.
I learned that you can make a sci-fi film that is satisfying overseas. European people have everything in check. I'd make every sci-fi film in Europe. They only work 14 hours a day. After that, it's overtime.
It's easy in a novel to be completely unambiguous about the relationship between animal and daemon simply by stating it outright; whereas you get very few opportunities to do this in an elegant way in a film.
I would have loved to do a film like 'Piku' or 'Neerja.' But I never got a role where a woman played an authoritative role. In my time, the hero and the villain were both men. The heroine was only the victim.
I'm not an actor who approaches films doing a lot of research. I do zero research, unless it's a film where I'm playing a mock version of someone who already existed. Then, you've got to do a lot of research.
[Martin] Scorsese says one of the great things he loves about it is how Mark can't get the right shot and he's killing people because he can't get the right shot. It's an example of what film-makers are like.
When the producers of 'Why Poverty?' came to me to do a film about poverty in the United States, I asked if I could do a film about wealth instead. I tend to make films about perpetrators, rather than victims.
The Dutch film industry is a pretty small community, so within Holland, I think most actors know each other and have worked with each other. The actors that are working internationally - that's a small number.
To work effectively in a film, you have to repeat and work consistently. Basically, you shoot a big master then you do close-ups. You're supposed to be in the same moment, the same 30-second moment, for a day.
When I stopped making films, they were getting on to the more realistic films and the explicit films and all. They were depicting life as it is, and some of it was unpleasant. I gradually moved away from that.
I'm not a real film buff. Unfortunately, I don't have time. I just don't go. And I become very nervous when I go to a film because I worry so much about the director and it is hard for me to digest my popcorn.
Jack Kennedy very much enjoyed Fletcher Knebel's thriller 'Seven Days in May,' later a film. The story: a jingo based on the real-life Admiral Arthur Radford plans a military coup to take over the White House.
In reviewing films, people get quite liberal about saying "the script" this and "the script" that, when they've never read the script any more than they've read the latest report on Norwegian herring landings.
After the release of 'Ashta Chemm,' several producers and directors came with similar roles in their films. But I doesn't want to do stereo type roles and do something different for each film, and refused them.
I would say that I probably remember football stuff... but it's not like you see it once and then it's just there. I go back and watch film, watch plays, and, in my brain, I probably only have room for so much.
In most films - especially in regards to the protagonist - really from the get-go they set up some scenario that endears that character to the audience. Or imbues him with some nobility or heroism or something.
I don't think I make genre films. I think studios try to sell films as genres because they know how to do that. There's nothing wrong with that. I don't know what I make. It's sort of a pot roast, all my films.
I don't get into any catfights with any of my colleagues. I want to keep a healthy work vibe with them, so I constantly message my women colleagues to keep in touch with them even after our film has wrapped up.
I think every film I make that puts characters in jeopardy is me purging my own fears, sadly only to re-engage with them shortly after the release of the picture. I'll never make enough films to purge them all.