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Quotes by Director

"It's people who are repressed and cannot express their fears that are dangerous."

"Basically, if you could get a good trailer out of the script, Roger had no objection to you making a really good movie. He liked it if you did. He liked the more cleverness and ingenuity you could bring to it. He just wasn't going to give you any more money."

"He looked like such a Republican. He dressed like Pee-Wee Herman. But had I known what he had done when I was reading about him, I might have thought different."

"There was no actual person who was James Bond, despite all the books."

"The programme has ended, something has finished, and he has a sense of something having finished its course, and then all of a sudden he turns away and this other thing has just finished its course, this other person."

"Everything is worth precisely as much as a belch, the difference being that a belch is more satisfying."

"Children's finger-painting came under the arts, but movies didn't."

"It seems that almost every time a valuable natural resource is discovered in the world-whether it be diamonds, rubber, gold, oil, whatever-often what results is a tragedy for the country in which they are found. Making matters worse, the resulting riches from these resources rarely benefit the people of the country from which they come."

"For people to understand me when I travel, I speak with my hands."


"The most ordinary word, when put into place, suddenly acquires brilliance. That is the brilliance with which your images must shine."

"As great as Ed is, the wisdom out here is that he can't carry a movie. They'll pay him $3 million to be the second banana in Julia Roberts things. But they won't put up $3 million for an Ed Harris movie."

"Parents decide to accept the responsibility of raising children. Any thanks they get for doing that is gravy. Grateful children are a blessing, but they aren't a necessity."

"And I've got some screenplays and plays ready to dip into when I need to."

"I think that George Lucas' 'Star Wars' films are fantastic. What he's done, which I admire, is he has taken all the money and profit from those films and poured it into developing digital sound and surround sound, which we are using today."

"I figured, 'When is that ever going to happen again?'. So I basically set out the opposite way movies are made; I set out with a budget first. I said, 'What can I do well for $40,000?'."

"The story is also about the battle between Arthur and the Saxons. The Saxons were destroying everything they came across and Arthur was left when Rome was falling because this movie takes place in 400 A.D."

"I'd made these experimental films but I thought the major chore of a filmmaker was to relate to actors."

"People tend to work in teams, in a collaborative way, in an informal network. If you create an environment like that, it's much more effective and much more efficient."

"But as far as the concept of HAL, who HAL was, his character - I had no role in creating him."

"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."


"When you do not know what you are doing and what you are doing is the best - that is inspiration."

"The funny thing is all these school shootings that we have, always happen in very religious communities. Maybe it's because the centre of their lives is a big fat nothing and it's just a fantasy and there's nothing there. I think maybe that might have something to do with it."

"Bisexuality immediately doubles your chances for a date on Saturday night."


"My movie is born first in my head, dies on paper; is resuscitated by the living persons and real objects I use, which are killed on film but, placed in a certain order and projected on to a screen, come to life again like flowers in water."

"I wanted to be a director and producer and writer, but in the early '40's the union wouldn't let you get through the gates. You couldn't get on a crew, or even learn to direct."

"The film's dramatic requirements should always take precedence over the mere aesthetics of editing."
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