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Quotes by Director

"With a genre like film noir, everyone has these assumptions and expectations. And once all of those things are in place, that's when you can really start to twist it about and mess around with it."

"Initially with The Butcher Boy, there was this kid growing up in this strange, weird environment that I remember from when I was a kid. And Patrick's vision was so complete there."

"With Bound, we wanted to pull at conventions, because you begin to wonder, Why do these stereotypes exist? Where do they come from? You use that as the subtext."


"Style is something that's extremely important, but it must grow naturally out of who and what you are and what the material calls for. It cannot be superimposed."

"When you make a movie outside the system and it's successful critically or a moderate financial success, you usually have to go back into the system and make a big hit."

"I always do an all-night horror marathon on Saturdays where we start at seven and go until five in the morning."

"I've also directed, shot, and edited several music videos."

"The most difficult thing is the organization of people and the expression of your intentions. It's very easy to have a picture in your head and to imagine that you've told everybody about what you need."

"I quickly realized that this medium had a lot to offer someone like me. To do Disney-quality hand-drawn cartoons, you have to be a master of two art forms. Seriously, you have to be able to draw like a Leonardo da Vinci or a Michelangelo. But also you have to know movement and timing and control that through 24 frames a second."

"More personal films, you could make them, but your budgets would be cut down."


"Angels possess greater powers than do human beings."

"Apparently nobody really read it, it was a cheap movie, it fit their schedule in terms of things so fine, let the guy make that high school comedy. I used to work with Mel Brooks so they figured oh it's going to be one of those really silly movies and that's how it got made."

"Everybody knows about Pearl Harbor. The thing that really fascinated me is that through this tragedy there was this amazing American heroism."

"The term 'giant' is used too often to describe artists. But in the case of Akira Kurosawa, we have one of the rare instances where the term fits."

"In our story logic which we're making up, if we're saying he's alive, then like a quadriplegic who's in bed he can move his head and shoulders, but he can't move his arms. If he could just turn on that power to his legs and arms, the nerves could get through and he could walk."


"The thing that fascinates me is that the way I came to film and television is extinct. Then there were gatekeepers, it was prohibitively expensive to make a film, to be a director you had to be an entrepreneur to raise money."

"What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet."


"The whole concept of the devil is a metaphor on one level."

"I like the fact that major studios have been attempting horror films recently."


"The other aspect is that you become much more aware of the structural problems that pertain to that continent. You feel the need to act to try and solve them."


"There is the danger of over preparation, of loss of spontaneity; over rehearsal is the most terrible thing you can imagine. We do have a very close association between costume and set designer, though. And the cameraman is very important, of course."

"I was very lucky. I started my own commercial company."

"I've found that the more experts you have on a movie, the less control the director has."

"My films are always concerned with family, friendship, honor, and patriotism."

"I feel about New York as a child whose father is a bank robber. Not perfect but I still love him."

"I did not marry the first girl that I fell in love with, because there was a tremendous religious conflict, at the time. She was an atheist, and I was an agnostic."

"The first thing is that we're being attacked by both the Writers Guild and the Producers Guild. Both of these groups are trying to diminish the importance and strength of the director. They're trying to do it through both frontal and side attacks."
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