Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
It's the same old story. Nothing in this world happens unless white folks says it happens. And therein lies the problem of being a professional black storyteller - writer, musician, filmmaker.
I'm a filmmaker, and I was most influenced by Hitchcock's films. How he could plant such deep enriched characters and then make us care both about the antagonist and protagonist was masterful.
I am my own worst critic, and I look at 'Death Sentence' now, and I go, 'Oh wow, I have really come a long way.' In terms of a filmmaker, I feel like my filmmaking language has really matured.
In Lithuania, I am known as a poet, and they don't care about my cinema. In Europe, they don't know my poetry; in Europe, I am a filmmaker. But here, in the United States, I am only a maverick!
As a filmmaker you have to keep asking yourself the question are we really going to impress them [audience] either by the wow factor, the intelligence factor, the I didn't see that coming factor?
If I was a young man, I might have bypassed the whole comedian-actor thing and just been a filmmaker. Then I'd probably have spent my whole life going, 'I wonder if I could have been a comedian.'
But you know, 'Star Wars' is the movie that's affected me the most in my entire life. It's the reason I wanted to become a filmmaker, and you've got this amazing opportunity to play on that field.
Hindsight is the most dangerous thing imaginable for me. I imagine that's the case for most filmmakers. And I would love to be a filmmaker who was an exception to that rule, but I'm certainly not.
I didn't have the sensibilities of your ordinary filmmaker, let alone your ordinary African-American filmmaker. My heroes were John Waters, Pedro Almodovar, and actors that were part of that world.
I've tried not to get sucked into the Hollywood hierarchy system. Personally, I don't like it when people are deferential to me because I'm an established filmmaker. It's a blue-collar sensibility.
As a filmmaker, I don't want to limit myself to one kind of movie. After 'Headhunters,' I went to Hollywood and read a lot of scripts: lots of action thrillers and heist movies, and superhero films.
I just trust the director and never overanalyse the script, screenplay, etc. You are just taking a bet at the end of the day, so confidence, be it on the filmmaker or the script, is all that counts.
The nature of the video camera really makes you focus on the present. Since I have always been a diarist filmmaker, not one who stages scenes with actors, it has always been about the present moment.
I started to do theater when I was a little boy at school, and then, I think because my father was a documentary filmmaker and worked for German television, I was of course fascinated by what he did.
When a documentary filmmaker, working in the style that I do, suggests that there has been a shooting ratio of 40 hours to every one hour of finished film, that doesn't mean that the other 39 are bad.
In a way, perhaps, there's an advantage of being on the edge of something and looking in as the observer, because as the filmmaker, you're the storyteller, and you're pulling out this universal story.
I'm big into not drawing conclusions for people. I think that's what makes for the most exciting, compelling films. I get bored when the politics of the filmmaker are the subject of the film that I see.
I'm not a very efficient filmmaker. There's a lot of guys, filmmakers like the Coen Brothers who shoot a whole movie and maybe don't use 12 setups. I'm in awe of people like that; I'm just not that guy.
There's some movies I watch, they're kind of like my anti-anxiety pill, my anti-depressant pill. I watch them at least once or twice a month probably. And I never stop learning from them as a filmmaker.
As a filmmaker, my approach is to come in not with preconceived notions, but with curiosity, and in that way, whether my subjects are James Carville or Anna Wintour or Dick Cheney, I am always surprised.
As a writer, or as a filmmaker, you have to present yourself, and part of what yourself is is what you're interested in, or what you think is funny, or what you think is sad, or what you think is horrible.
In pre-school, I was drawing dinosaurs - I was huge into dinosaurs. I wanted to be a paleontologist, not a cartoonist or a filmmaker or anything like that - just a paleontologist. So I would draw dinosaurs.
It's always better to work with a good filmmaker. It makes a lot of difference with the presentation of the film, which matters a lot at the end of the day. But I don't really concentrate on only big names.
Film is an emotional medium; it's not a logical medium. It's not an intellectual medium, so every decision you make as a filmmaker and an actor has to be emotional in some way, even in the rejection of logic.
If you ask a filmmaker to analyse his own film, it would take three or four years to do that, honestly. Because when you make a film, you have to be convinced about it. You are married to that film for a year.
It's rare for the studios to find a filmmaker who wants to make a family film. To find someone that has an idea, embraces it, has kids and wants to make something exciting - well, they don't see that too often.
It's tricky to ask a filmmaker to explain his own work; usually we're the least qualified to make sense of what we've done, unfortunately, because of the tunnel vision required to create anything over four years.
My style of songwriting is influenced by cinema. I'm a frustrated filmmaker. A fan once said to me, 'Girl, you make me see pictures in my head!' and I took that as a great compliment. That's exactly my intention.
The success of one film may convince the filmmaker to try repeat his successes and get into a competition with himself. One cannot dwell on periodic successes. You have to look at it as a temporary, passing thing.
It's my approach as a filmmaker always to go in, not with a thesis or preconceived notion, but with curiosity and questions and inquiry. So in some way, I'm always surprised. I'm always finding paths of engagement.
As a woman filmmaker it's pretty important that you have some basis of confidence that you're coming from, because, as I got closer to LA, there's less and less women. There's less and less mirrors for who you are.
If there is a woman filmmaker or a woman artist, the issue of gender is floating very close to their work... It almost naturally comes into their work. If one looks at all the male artists, the issue is never there.
This politics is bound to be reflected in the work of a serious filmmaker. When I make a film, I try to tell a human story to the best of my ability. I do not set out either to preach messages or purely to entertain.
To be an actor, you have to be self-obsessed, but when you are a filmmaker, you get a macro view. Every aspect of making the film is under your purview. And for me, that is a bigger turn-on than just being an actress.
I attempt to create a form of seriocomic entertainment to either delight, enlighten, or disgust, whichever you'd like. In terms of making motion pictures, I write and direct and act. I guess you'd say I'm a filmmaker.
I have three sons, and the oldest wants to play pirates all the time. It has all these associations of living some kind of very free life. It's interesting for me as a filmmaker to show a whole different side of that.
I love my work, apart from when it's driving me crazy. But I get to be interested in stuff and think like a filmmaker as I'm buzzing about the world and then see an opportunity to make a film, and then make it happen.
The interesting thing is that when you start out, people have no judgment and they see you young and fresh as a filmmaker - and because you have no experience yet, you're much more naive and think anything is possible.
'Coriolanus' has been around for 400 years, and it's going to be around for another 400 years, and nothing I can do is going to mess it up. So, going into it, I felt sort of very free to look at it as a filmmaker does.
I've always adored the filmmaker Sam Fuller. The first time I watched 'Shock Corridor' was such a magnificent discovery. I love his lack of subtlety, the way he tackles serious topics with bold and inappropriate humor.
I call myself a feminist, not a feminist filmmaker. If somebody asked me if I had a feminist sensibility it would be pretty hard to deny, but is it the theme of my work? Not necessarily. I'm interested in a lot of things.
There's got to be something you want to tell and that's the engine which spurs all of the work you have to do in order to create the story, but you have to love some sort of nugget of what you're telling to be a filmmaker.
As a filmmaker, I'm very collaborative. I don't pretend to know everything that is needed to make a movie. What I like to do is get together with a group of people, starting with developing the story and bounce around ideas.
I really took filmmaking very seriously... It was an honor and then a crutch also, because at a young age, I was like, I guess I'm a serious filmmaker. I never set out to be a serious filmmaker. I just set out to make movies.
I still consider myself to be an amateur filmmaker. And I say that because in the Latin origin of the word amateur is the word love, and it's love of a form, whereas professional implies something you do for money or for work.
I do think Australians as a rule have a very good sensibility to them, and I think most people, if they were given the option, wouldn't choose to rip off a filmmaker or an artist - I don't think its part of the Australian psyche.
You still get the movies made. A filmmaker can always scrape up money to do a movie. The passion drives it. And you'll get the money. Money's the easiest thing. But the hardest thing is finding a way for people to see your movie.
I'm deeply stressed as a filmmaker, and I know I'm not alone. The censorship crisis, the moral policing, the politics of it has most of us on edge. I'm scared to use certain words: like, if I use 'Bombay,' will there be a problem?
The terrorists who committed the 2003 Istanbul attacks were locals, that is, Turks. And when filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered in the Netherlands last year, the murderer and his supporters were also part of the Muslim community.
When you are doing music videos through the '90s, which I did, and the 2000s, you were put in the position, really, as an independent filmmaker. You were being financed by a major record company or a minor record company or whatever.