Films Quotes

You live these three months in this reality, in this dark reality. You don't want to do those films every year because they're taxing. I started smoking a lot of cigarettes.

I said if I made 10 films in my life, I would be very lucky. That's how I meant it. My fear after my first one was whether they would let me make another one, so I had this goal in my head.

Usually action films have a formula: good guy gets in trouble, his wife dies, friends have problems, so he goes to the mountain, learns martial arts, comes back, and kills the bad guy.

I don't think I'm a total pessimist, so I think you can find hope in all my films.

I've always been a fan of science fiction films, and I've never been able to put my particular spin on it.

There's one thing which I hate about color films... people who use up a lot of their despairing producer's money by working in the laboratory to bring out the dominant hues, or to make color films where there isn't any color.

People go to extraordinary lengths to get films made.

Young actors are serious about their work and don't take any time out from it. I'm very serious about my work; there are probably only two films I've done where I had a really good time.

I also don't like films that are made just to make money, no this kind of film I don't like.

I usually play character parts in Hollywood films.

I've made seventeen or eighteen films now, only two of which have been original screenplays, all the others have been based on short stories or novels, and I find the long short story ideal for adaptation.

I've been directing for 25 years almost, and I've only directed nine films in that time because I like to be careful.

I don't think that you can be prescriptive about anything, I mean, life is too complicated. Maybe there are novels where the author has not in the least thought about it in terms of film, which can be turned into good films.

Working on films where the money's more important than the creativity, I just get a bit freaked out by that. I just don't feel comfortable.

I think in art, but especially in films, people are trying to confirm their own existences.

I've been taking my time now between projects looking for stuff that has a little bit more substance, that isn't surface. Some of the films that I've done in the past really were surface.

Yes, I was hired by Universal because they needed a comedy director. They had seen Scandal and liked it. I saw an opportunity even in those comedies to begin my project of American films.

European films were what it was about for me - the sensations I needed, the depth, the storytelling, the characters, the directors, and the freedom that you can't really find in American films.

I knew by heart all the dialogue of James Dean's films; I could watch Rebel Without a Cause a hundred times over.

For a London play, rehearsal time would be four weeks for the entire show. In films, I'd spend six weeks on the big dance numbers to get them perfect before the actual shooting.

The marketing department is really an important part of getting an animated film to work. If the people running it are used to selling live action films and the hard rock music and the sex and all those things... Anything outside that, they just don't know what to do with it.

There's such good writing now on television and I don't see a lot of great writing on films sadly.

I think you've got to talk to the director, see the director's films and recognise that it's important that the work fits right in and see if as part of the movie.

One thing I know is that I don't want to be a director for hire, making genre films.

Yes, actually ever since I saw his films and tried to write about them, Sirk's been in everything I've done. Not Sirk himself, but what I've learned from his work.

If it helps me in the way that if this movie is successful, I get to make more films, great, and the more films that I make and the more interest that I'm allowed to cover, the better for me and the better, hopefully, for the people who like to watch me.

Truthfully, I'm proud of each of my films in a certain way.

I had seen the films out of World War II, the great 82nd Airborne, the 101st, and all of those of you in the greatest generation and the service that you had provided.

And it's not only films, I'm pretty unaware of anything that's going on in popular culture right now.

What I think happens today is that a lot of filmmakers look at other films that are retro pieces, like L.A. Confidential, and say, oh, that's period. We didn't want to do the stereotypical stuff.