Film Quotes

A lot of film directors are quite scared of actors. They are a bit of a nightmare sometimes, but I like them. It looks like cunning, but you try to get extra things from them all the time, by stealth, by making them feel confident, so they trust you and you can push a bit.

In film, you have to let go sometimes.

Each new film is like a trial. Before I step in front of the camera, I do not know whether I am going to fall or whether I am going to fly - and that is exactly the way I want it to stay.

I think everyone goes through chapters in their life and there was a time when I wasn't feeling terribly positive about what I was contributing to film, or wasn't feeling as if I was going in the direction I wanted and I re-evaluated what I was doing.

Well, I think that a lot of times when you're working on a film, there aren't really opportunities to get to know all the people you have to work with.

The theater is a tough place. It's not cushioned the way it is in film and television.

I don't particularly enjoy watching films in 3D because I think that a well-shot and well-projected film has a very three-dimensional quality to it, so I'm somewhat sceptical of the technology.

Throughout my career, when I was finished with the drawing for one film I would go up to the story department and help develop sequences. Sometimes these were for scenes that I would animate later on.

This is indeed not only relevant to Documentary but is evident is most type of film making. The film often mirrors the experience, understanding and politics of the director.

You know what I would like to do: make a film with actors standing in empty space so that the spectator would have to imagine the background of the characters.

This character in the film, these things that he says which sound like advice and wise things, they are very common for Orientals. It's all the tradition.

There was really a snobbery from people in film - they did not want people who had come from television. It was the poor relation of show business, and especially situation comedy.

If you get a chance to be in a film, that's great. One of my goals is to make a record as good as Don Henley's album, Building the Perfect Beast.

I've never made a film using dialogue or speech.

Making a film or doing a play are completely different experiences and entirely fulfilling, but completely unique. I also think one complements the other. People often say that theater is about flexing your muscles, and is actually real acting, whereas I sort of disagree.

Godard is incredibly brilliant, the things he says. Apparently here in France, the most interesting thing when a new film of his is going to come out are his press conferences, because he's so brilliant.

The stage is suspension of disbelief. Film is a literal medium.

Oh yeah - I watched Knife in the Water, saw the shot, and repeated it. But even if I hadn't seen that film, inevitably the camera would've ended up on top of that mast, I mean if you think of it there are only so many dynamic shots on a boat.

I think it's a little simplistic to explain a work through the psychology of its author. In other words, that Haneke has emotional problems, so I don't have to take his films seriously. By using this argument, the viewer retreats from the challenges of the film.

You are probably right when you say that I could get a role in any producer's film if I just asked.

This is unexposed film of Greenwich Village because nothing ever happens there.

People do more important jobs than acting in film that should be recognised, but for some reason it's big money, so people are elevated in status. If I was a bus driver, I'm sure you wouldn't be interviewing me.

I think it's easier to make a film with 200 million dollars than 960 grand.

I think making a good film shot is joyful.

I use a lot of film images, analogies, and imagination.

If anything I try to write something that would be more difficult to film. I tend to see film as competition and would like instead to do what books do best.

I think I'm the only actor in the history of film who got to slap Sam Jackson on the face and butt and lived to tell about it.

I mean, this whole digital revolution is really eroding the director's importance on a movie because, number one, just from a practical standpoint, with floppy disks and the ability to put all of the film onto a disk, more people have access to the movie.

What goes down on film is different to what you see with the naked eye.

I was thrust into a really lofty, enviable, but isolated position with 'Princess Diaries' in that I could carry a film before I really knew if I could act.