top of page
Quotes by Director

"Painting pictures didn't make me a lot of money. I have to eat."


"It isn't glamorous until after the film is finished, and you are at the premiere and getting your picture on the cover of magazines."
Film,

"A disk unbeknownst to the director can go to the producer in another city or in another office and that producer can edit behind the director's back much easier than in the old days. Since these dailies are now put on videotape, more kinds of people have access to dailies."

"In terms of the feeling of the piece, I cant think about what people are gonna think about it, what are the critics gonna say, I'm trying to bring some resolution, and realize that myself. It's a struggle; it's a process that gets us this."


"I don't really know what is shocking. When you tell the story of a man who is beheaded, you have to show how they cut off his head. If you don't, it's like telling a dirty joke and leaving out the punch line."
Man,

"When I was about 9, I had polio, and people were very frightened for their children, so you tended to be isolated. I was paralyzed for a while, so I watched television."

"But when you're writing a script - for me anyway - you have to sort of create an enforced innocence. You have to divest yourself of worrying about a lot of stuff like what movies are hot, what movies are not hot, what the budget of this movie might be."


"Now, I'll tell you something that might interest you. Casino Royale was the first Bond book that Ian Fleming ever wrote. And he couldn't get anybody to touch it, to publish it - he couldn't do anything about it at all. Nobody wanted to know."


"The movies that influenced me were movies that told their stories through pictures more than words."

"It's... a hard thing for a director, to think you came up with a shot, something from your mind, and someone died while doing it. It's the worst thing you'll ever have to live with. It was very hard for me to get back on the horse again."
Mind,

"The professional world was much more unpleasant than I thought. I was always wishing I could get back that enthusiasm I had when I was doing shows at college."


"I thought that subtitles are boring because they're there generally to serve us with information to make you understand what people are saying in a different language."

"In Australia, they set up a special fund to kick films off. It was quite an enlightened sort of move. You could go to this government bureau with scripts and and get finance for films."

"And I always had this idea for making a movie about a femme fatale, because I like these characters. They're a lot of fun, they're sexy, they're manipulative, they're dangerous."

"I've continued to always keep in mind having a healthy does of that in Hollywood, now that I am part of the system and obviously have to follow the way the system works - you still have to have that crazy determination."

"I was born in 1942, so I was mainly aware of Howard Hughes' name on RKO Radio Pictures."

"That's how I like to do it with actors, have them really go for it and I'll tell them when it's too much. It's always easier to bring it back then to push it further."

"I always like to reveal the fact that the emperor has no clothes. And children are best at that. They teach us how to see the world in that sense. They are without artifice; they see it for what it is. I am drawn to that ruthless honesty."

"Now there is so much expertise and brainpower it's hard to be at the cutting edge of what's cool and not do something that's totally geeky."

"If you write a movie for Roger Corman, it's going to get made. You saw it almost the next day."

"I thought that the AIVD was there to protect citizens like me."

"The number of opera houses around the world and the high attendance rates show that opera an art form that is more popular than ever."


"When I come to London, I always like to see what's playing at the NFT."


"It's everything and I always make decisions about the cast."

"I am not trying to be a historian and a dramatist; I'm a dramatist, a dramatic historian, or one who does a dramatic interpretation of history."

"Censorship of ideas or images or words is wrong."

"So I've had really great assistant directors for my last seven movies."

"All tools have intrinsic politics and technology is the tool of now."

"Listening to what people were saying wasn't even important. But it was important to look as if you were listening to what people were saying. Actually, listening to what people are saying, to me, interferes with looking as if you were listening to what people are saying."

"I always think the Sex Pistols and the Ramones as very, very important because they stripped things down."
Sex,
bottom of page