top of page
Quotes by Director

"All the characters in my films are fighting these problems, needing freedom, trying to find a way to cut themselves loose, but failing to rid themselves of conscience, a sense of sin, the whole bag of tricks."

"I don't want to be made pacified or made comfortable. I like stuff that gets your adrenaline going."
Want,

"I think I avoid stepping into sentimentality by trying to be as truthful as possible with performances."

"Because if you lived, as I did, several years under Nazi totalitarianism, and then 20 years in communist totalitarianism, you would certainly realize how precious freedom is, and how easy it is to lose your freedom."

"Now a movie goes out to two, three thousand theaters and by Friday night at 10 o'clock they know if you are in or out. That desperate competition is, I think, horrendous. It's awful."

"I'd rather direct than produce. Any day. And twice on Sunday."

"I never regarded my pictures as very much to be proud of, except in this, the craft, the style."

"Hospitals are places that you have to stay in for a long time, even if you are a visitor. Time doesn't seem to pass in the same way in hospitals as it does in other places. Time seems to almost not exist in the same way as it does in other places."

"My goal is to make as many films as possible about different aspects of American life."

"I think the Matrix effect is over-used and I don't do it anymore."

"You have to edit the material. That assumes that some kind of a mind is operating in relation to the material. Not all minds are the same. Every aspect of filmmaking requires choice. The selection of the subject, the shooting, editing and length are all aspects of choice."

"I started working with friends of mine and that, to some degree, continues."

"One of the people that became a major source was Clarence Tripp who worked with Kinsey."

"I think one of the privileges of being a filmmaker is the opportunity to remain a kind of perpetual student."

"I think decor says a lot about someone's social position, their taste, their sensibility, their work - and also about the aesthetic way I have chosen to tell their story."

"I look at the story, I look at the idea and just try to think of it in terms of that whole body of myth and see where the characters fit in and what they ought to be doing-all those archetypes are there to play with."

"The question in their minds was, why did the outside world, and particularly the Western world, produce all these landmines, and send them to Afghanistan? This business must be stopped. It's a dirty business to produce such a horrible device."

"I lost a year or two in there, trying to get films financed that I didn't know would never get financing."

"I'm less comfortable making American movies because I don't know them so well."

"You're not a historian, but most historians will tell you that they make very discrete judgment as to what facts to omit in order to make their book into some shape, some length that can be managed."

"I'm certainly getting a lot more mail... that's basically it."

"You know, I listen to contemporary music all the time."

"I think the audience would like to see movies that are stunning to watch. I really think they'd like to see spectacles."

"One of the characteristics of the dream is that nothing surprises us in it. With no regret, we agree to live in it with strangers, completely cut off from our habits and friends."

"I wanted to make connections between Whale's past and present."

"I'm such a good lover because I practice a lot on my own."

"There's not really much destruction in New York besides the weather and it's a natural force so it's not like any destruction. But LA gets leveled (laughs). That's my comment to Hollywood."

"The great difference between screen acting and theatre acting is that screen acting is about reacting - 75% of the time, great screen actors are great reactors."

"That's easy to answer: I never had any special appetite for filmmaking, but you have to make a living and it is miraculous to earn a living working in film."

"I was always fascinated by engineering. Maybe it was an attempt maybe to get my father's respect or interest, or maybe it was just a genetic love of technology, but I was always trying to build things."
bottom of page