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Quotes by Director

"All my movies are difficult to classify because they are very eclectic in mixing genres."

"I look at other filmmakers and see skills in them that I wish I had but I know that I don't. I feel like I have to work really hard to keep myself afloat, doing what I do. But I find it pleasurable."
Work,

"The idea is that that there is no such thing as an external enemy."

"To me this movie is about what is valuable. To one person it might be a stone; to someone else, a story in a magazine; to another, it is a child. The juxtaposition of one man obsessed with finding a valuable diamond with another man risking his life to find his son is the beating heart of this film."

"I think Christine and Chad are on the opposite extremes of the spectrum. Christine is a model victim, and Chad is a model perpetrator, and Howard is closer to the middle."

"I just wanted to do this all Australian film and we didn't want to give creative control to overseas 'cause whoever comes on my sets, whether you're sweeping the floor or an actor, it doesn't matter who comes up with the ideas, it's a collaboration."

"Clinton used to like to get out of the White House a lot. He would take night trips to McDonald's, and stuff like that. I think he wanted to get out of the house."

"No, but it's not because I'm getting older that I'm trying to accelerate. But something very curious is happening: The older I get, the more ideas I'm getting."

"Ford Fairlane was one of those movies that was so much fun to make that it was bound not to be a big hit."

"Your best protection is to have an established agent make the contact."

"Angelina wanted to make sure that any fighting in the movie would be comparable to any male actor. Everything from stick fighting to horse riding was real to her."

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it without a sense of ironic futility."

"Any film that supports the idea that things can be changed is a great film in my eyes."

"Movies are a complicated collision of literature, theatre, music and all the visual arts."

"When a parent shows up with an attitude of entitlement, understand that under it is a boatload of anxiety."

"Also, there are now new laws in Brazil which create incentives for Argentine and Latin American films to be premiered and distributed in Brazil and vice versa."

"But, when Scripture makes a clear distinction between the act of creation and the process of preservation, we cannot accept the idea of a progressive creation process."

"There were scenes that just for length purposes, and knowing that the attention span of kids is not great, don't make it much longer than about 90 minutes."

"For example, a man who might not have enormous charisma, who could be president 40 years ago, and who was a deserving president, I don't know that George Washington would be a president today, I don't know that Abe Lincoln would, I don't know that Roosevelt would."

"I started using film as part of live theatre performance - what used to be called performance art - and I became intrigued by film."

"When you make a film you usually make a film about an idea."

"My movement from painting to film was a very conscious one."

"But with my last film, Spider it was agony. The money was always disappearing, nobody got paid, it was very difficult - and it's very distracting from the process of making the movie, of course. So I think things have been getting harder and harder."

"I mean simply to say that I want my characters to suggest the background in themselves, even when it is not visible. I want them to be so powerfully realized that we cannot imagine them apart from their physical and social context even when we see them in empty space."

"The essence of the stage is concentration and penetration. Of the screen action, movement, sweep."

"Woody Allen has done some excellent serious movies, too, like Crimes And Misdemeanors. Very overlooked movie, I think, and really his best. And currently I like Big Fish!"

"There is no filmmaking legislation because distributors are not interested in sharing their money with the film industry - for instance, by giving a percentage of ticket sales back to filmmakers."

"I don't think movies can ever be too intense, but people have to understand why you're showing them the things you are showing them."

"To you I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition."
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