top of page
Quotes by Director

"All stereotypes turn out to be true. This is a horrifying thing about life. All those things you fought against as a youth: you begin to realize they're stereotypes because they're true."
Life,

"Every picture that is successful has one little miracle in it."

"As you know, in America there's no rights for the artist, so whatever films I've made kind of belong to the studio, so if they want to remake it they can."

"When an actor comes to me and wants to discuss his character, I say, 'It's in the script.' If he says, 'But what's my motivation?, ' I say, 'Your salary.'"

"In this movie they took them up in space. They're floating around and doing zero gravity stuff. Well, they had to do it all on wires. All the wires had to be painted black against this black background. If you didn't light it properly you could see the wires. Drove them crazy!"

"I think I've made some pretty decent films in the '80s and '90s."

"I consider my films to be poems that are all as personal as my writing and as hand-made."

"I've made seventeen or eighteen films now, only two of which have been original screenplays, all the others have been based on short stories or novels, and I find the long short story ideal for adaptation."
Now,

"Film is shot in fragments, and the same moments can be shot again and again until the director is satisfied."

"I deliberately, in a way, went for something that was a huge challenge and was a big period film. I was excited about the canvas on which I could tell the story as much as the story itself."

"It's always an enormous pressure when you do a sequel. The demands are so high, and it's expensive."

"Naturally we need black men to give this movie serious credibility."

"You sit at the board and suddenly your heart leaps. Your hand trembles to pick up the piece and move it. But what chess teaches you is that you must sit there calmly and think about whether it's really a good idea and whether there are other, better ideas."

"Most Italians who came to this country are very patriotic. There was this exciting possibility that if you worked real hard, and you loved something, you could become successful."

"It's developing a relationship with actors that makes it work."

"I never thought of becoming a director. When I was twelve, the passage from silent film to the talkies had an impact on me - I still watch silent films."

"In Dreams... well, I was slightly overcompensating with that. I was a bit like a director for hire, so maybe I was putting too much imagery that was familiar to me into it."

"So our films had a lot more to them than entertainment value, and I'm glad that a lot of people recognize that now. People realize now the value of them as educational."

"I've always had the impression that real militants are like cleaning women, doing a thankless, daily but necessary job."

"You can dress it up, but it comes down to the fact that a movie is only as good as its script."

"I remember growing up with television, from the time it was just a test pattern, with maybe a little bit of programming once in a while."

"To me the only real star of the movie is the writer. And I work with writers very closely, from outline to first draft and on to the seventh draft, whatever it takes. Then my job is to support the director to make the best movie we can. Some producers try to go past them, but my job is to support them."

"I really think the biopic thing so rarely works, because people's lives don't have a dramatic shape that can be satisfying."

"I mean, the truth of the matter is, I like the failures as much as I like the successes, it's only the world that doesn't like the failures."

"I'm very happy with the way I write. I think I do it good. But I've never really considered myself a writer."

"Years ago I had a house in Sussex, it was like Arcadia, with an old Victorian bridge, a pond and the Downs."

"It's very eclectic, the way one chooses subjects in the movie business, especially in the commercial movie business. You need to develop material yourself or material is presented to you as an assignment to direct."

"In films murders are always very clean. I show how difficult it is and what a messy thing it is to kill a man."
Man,
bottom of page