Film Quotes

If you do two versions of a film, they should be identical. With the same frames and settings.

I don't think there's much point in putting me a deep, dark, heavy, emotional film because there are people who do it so much better than I do.

I'd like to do an independent film.

Can you imagine what it would be like if all the Aussie film talent was able to make Australian stories?

Oh, yes, that never happened to me in my life before. It was a risky film, and I warned the producer.

Once you're directing, you're kind of in a certain mode, where you're taking whatever is on the page and forming it into the film that you think it might want to be. So whether it's my writing or not, I still try to work with it in the same way.

You need an R rating because without one, you can't advertise and the film won't get shown.

No I didn't audition, I didn't even know David Lynch till the week before I started the film.

Three years after starting, by physically doing everything from raising the finance to special effects, we'd finally cobbled together our low budget film.

A film should be an experience. You should feel something. It should motivate you to feel something.

So much of the downstream revenue is linked to that initial excitement, to how much revenue is produced in the domestic box office. For example, what we pay for a film three years later is highly correlated to how well it did in the box office.

I love these movies where it's just about the film. You don't have my face on the poster. It's all about the movie. I like that.

So when my film career took off, I always felt like I was trying to play catch-up because I hadn't studied acting before. I didn't know how to manage money or my career. When I look back, I think I was a little bit shell-shocked.

I think that in some cases, I've made films that have a sentimental quality, at least as part of the film.

I'm drawn to a good story, really, as I hope most people are. For me, it's the story that's going to stay with you eventually, not necessarily the genre. I go to watch a film because of the story, not because it was a Western or a comedy.

It took me a long time to film the plastic bag, and then I had to get the cut of the scene right. But if you find it as beautiful as the character does, then suddenly it becomes a different movie, and so did he as a character.

Connection is what one is after in probably most media, but certainly in film, which is an immersive medium.

This film is what it is. It's a campy thriller horror movie where you go and have fun. With these types of films, you can't take it too seriously. They are what they are.

I did 'Nobody Walks' right after 'Dredd.' Well, actually, I got off the plane from Capetown where we shot 'Dredd' and tested for 'Being Flynn' that same day. Then I came out to L.A. to make this film right after that so it was all very back to back.

It was 100 feet of 16 mm black-and-white film of a car coming to a stop sign, and driving off. I had to decide how to frame and light it. It was magic. There was a sense of mystery.

I like doing them and they're ridiculous and the actors can improvise a lot, and they don't have to be really realistic characters that hit a very specific tone as in a feature film. They're really fun, I want to make more of them definitely.

I used to love Woody Allen but feel he's become a hack as a director. 'Bullets Over Broadway' is the only film of his I've enjoyed in the last 10 years.

The more film I watch, the more John Ford looks like a giant. His politics aren't so good, and you have to learn to accept John Wayne as an actor, but he's a poet in black and white.

There was one titanic guiding light on the film set, and I was in the presence of a true Mahatma, in the deepest and most profound sense of the word.

In studio films, everything has to be boxed in, everybody needs to know beforehand - this is comedy, this is sci-fi, this is drama - and what's the point of independent film if you don't get to experiment?

I'm working on bringing the instant film camera back as part of the future.

I've just been more interested in doing film right now and I don't want to go away from my family for six months, which was what I would have had to have done if I did the play on Broadway.

We get along really well, but TV and film aren't reality. We're best friends, but we do have our fights!

You know, let a few years go by until I hit my midlife crisis. Then that can be documented on film.

No, I did a film called 'Death and the Compass' as well.