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Quotes by Director

"I made over forty Westerns. I used to lie awake nights trying to think up new ways of getting on and off a horse."

"Such manifestations I account as representing the creative leadership of the new forces of thought and appreciation which attend changes in technological pattern and therefore of the pattern of human relationships in society."

"The interesting thing about movies, it's not always - y'know, you have to have structure etc and all those things, but an audience responds, in many ways, we walk away and certain things stay in our heads that are memorable."

"We're all complex human beings, and if some of that complexity shows through, I think it's advantageous for the movie."

"I make movies just as painters paint: I work where I can."


"No one is out to get you. It's just that... people are monkeys."


"What you do, is you gradually become more and more experienced, and more and more realistic about dramatic tolerance, i.e. about how long the play should be."

"I wanted to make these people real, not like they were in a painting. Like these are people who don't know they're in a period movie. Those concerns are incredibly immediate."


"If you can talk brilliantly about a problem, it can create the consoling illusion that it has been mastered."


"I try to address my audiences intelligently. The man in the street counts, but sometimes he forgets that he counts."

"We don't live in the world of reality, we live in the world of how we perceive reality."

"The danger is not so much in the economic structure of a society but in its intellectual structure."

"It's so easy to manipulate an audience, but it's nearly always clear that you are being manipulated. I think even people that are not critically attuned are aware of cynical manipulation in film."

"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."

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

"Many of the comedies I had made in Sweden were slightly based on semi-autobiographical experiences, so adapting novels was a very different experience."

"Personally I am very much against the death penalty for several reasons."

"Some of us have great original ideas and some of us depend on adaptations."

"I think people remember pictures not dialogue. That's why I like pictures."

"There was a widespread indignation in the American media. They were saying, 'How can you make a movie during an election that's about politics? What are you doing? Are you trying to influence people's lives?' To which my response was, 'Well, I hope so.'"

"You can have a lot of unhappiness by not having money, but the reverse is no guarantee of happiness."

"There is a segment of the American population that has been excluded from the national myth, and that should be redressed."

"If it turns out that there is a God...the worst that you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever."

"I value peace when it is not bought at the price of fundamental decencies."

"For behaviorist films, that's been much more useful - the change of technology - but for my kind of films, doing them on film is much better, because it's more beautiful."

"And later I thought, I can't think how anyone can become a director without learning the craft of cinematography."


"I've had 79 to 80 years of show business. I started when I was 5 with a man called Tom Mix. I didn't have time to go to school because I was in silent movies, I was in radio, I was in burlesque, I worked with the circus. I'm all show business!"
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