#Film Quotes

“I do not make films primarily for children. I make them for the child in all of us, whether we be six or sixty.”

“I am not influenced by the techniques or fashions of any other motion picture company.”

“Moving pictures can be and will be new and fresh and exciting as long as there are ideas and talent in the world.”

“Women are the best judges of anything we turn out. Their taste is very important. They are the theatergoers; they are the ones who drag the men in. If the women like it, to heck with the men.”

“It's always a challenge bringing a great story classic to the screen. Giving visual form to the characters and places that have only existed in the imagination. But it's the kind of challenge we enjoy.”

“I like my films to influence the audience. Even if it means tripping their aged grandparents with a cane when they get home.”

“Movies can and do have tremendous influence in shaping young lives.”

“I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter. With the laugh comes the tears and in developing motion pictures or television shows, you must combine all the facts of life - drama, pathos and humor.”

“We seem to know when to 'tap the heart.' Others have hit the intellect. We can hit them in all emotional way. Those who appeal to the intellect only appeal to a very limited group. The real thing behind this is: we are in the motion picture business, only we are drawing them instead of photographing them.”

“If I can't find a theme, I can't make a film anyone else will feel. I can't laugh at intellectual humor. I'm just corny enough to like to have a story hit me over the heart.”

“No one person can take credit for the success of a motion picture. It's strictly a team effort. From the time the story is written to the time the final release print comes off the printer, hundreds of people are involved - each one doing a job - each job contributing to the final product.”

“I want to do films and have my name mentioned next to Wes Anderson and Quentin Tarantino. I don't want my name mentioned next to other rappers at all.”

“I have determined that there is no market for talking pictures”

“You should love literature. You should live in the library. Forget about films.”

“Hollywood was a good influence because I was madly in love with films, and the films had a direct influence on me.”

“I'm gonna see 'Mission Impossible' Part 9 because I like Tom Cruise movies! But just because the box office has that one receipt from the ticket I purchased, doesn't mean it represents someone who liked it.”

“I just want to do movies, and I want to sell them. I don't want to link up with some product.”

“Finding a good script is really difficult and the scariest thing of all is when they say about a script that's not right, "we will fix it.." It's like before you get on the Titanic and you see a big hole. In process, it's too late.”

“Whenever you're trying to do a film in a genuine historical period, you do have to make sure that you get as much historically accurate as you possibly can because there are thousands of people who are wildly interested in the Civil War. If we get anything wrong, there is no doubt that we're going to hear from them.”

“Sometimes you have to make a movie to make money.”

“I love doing live action movies, but there's a great job in doing animation, especially one with music.”

“Whenever I work on a film, I have three rules. Only three and I tell them to every screenwriter. I say let's retain the spirit and the intent of the overall story. Let's make it the best film that we possibly can.”

“Working on a novel is very solitary and I get to be the boss. I'm the dictator, so I win every battle. So, in that sense, novels are easier because you don't have to answer to anyone. And then, you go into something like film and there are more cooks in the kitchen, so to speak.”

“There's a lot of crap out there. Most of the science fiction films alone are abominations, you know. They're mindless. So you can't learn from those kinds of films.”

“I've done a number of films. I've been around this. I think the biggest challenge is just getting the script right, the way that you want the script to be. It's really about capturing the complexity of emotions and creating the kind of characters that people will want to watch every week.”

“I define science fiction as the art of the possible. Fantasy is the art of the impossible. Science fiction, again, is the history of ideas, and they're always ideas that work themselves out and become real and happen in the world. And fantasy comes along and says, 'We're going to break all the laws of physics.' ... Most people don't realize it, but the series of films which have made more money than any other series of films in the history of the universe is the James Bond series. They're all science fiction, too - romantic, adventurous, frivolous, fantastic science fiction!”

“Some things definitely work better on film than in books. Introspection is great in books but it doesn't work on film. Anything with high intensity, whether it's a love scene, a car chase, a fight scene - those things work so well on film and oftentimes they can tell a much broader part of the story.”

“You need someone who has a really good way of enabling trust in the cast and crew, or the cast particularly, to allow them the confidence to stretch themselves to get the performance that you're going to need to provide all of the emotional up and downs in the film.”

“A book is maybe about 350 pages, and the prose allows for readers to get a glimpse into the internal lives of the characters. A screenplay is 120 pages, and it's all dialogue and action. The pacing of films is different, the structure is often different, and the internal lives of the characters must come across through the acting. Movies are just a different experience than reading - so it just depends on what an individual prefers.”

“It's a certain kind of immortality, because those Disney films do go on and on and on.”

“I called the hotel operator and she said, "How can I direct your call?" I said, "Well, you could say 'Action!', and I'll begin to dial. And when I say 'Goodbye', then you can yell 'Cut!'"”

“["Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas"] is a very hard book to translate to film because there's so much interior monologue. The what if factor. I tried to write it cinematically and let the dialogue carry it but I forgot about the interior monologue. It's kind of hard to show what's going on in the head. I think we should do it like a documentary.”

“Whatever’s inside making me what I am, it’s like film. Film only works in the dark. Tear it all open and let in the light and you kill it.”

“But you can't show some far off idyllic conception of behavior if you want the kids to come and see the picture. You've got to show what it's really like, and try to reach them on their own grounds.”

“["Where the Buffalo Roam" is] horrible pile of crap. [Bill] Murray did a good job. But it was a bad script. You can't beat a bad script. It was just a horrible movie. A cartoon. But Bill Murray did a good job. We actually wrote and shot several different endings and beginnings and they all got cut out in the end. It was disappointing.”

“Because the writer must be a participant in the scene, while he's writing it — or at least taping it, or even sketching it. Or all three. Probably the closest analogy to the ideal would be a film director/producer who writes his own scripts, does his own camera work and somehow manages to film himself in action, as the protagonist or at least a main character.”

“I can't think of any one film that improved on a good novel, but I can think of many good films that came from very bad novels.”

“The truth is that I know very few novelists who have been satisfied with the adaptation of their books for the screen.”

“Whenever I think about movies, I always look at that art process as having the best of a lot of worlds. Because if you watch a great film, you have a musical element to it, not just on the scoring, but in the way that the shots are edited - that has music and rhythm and time.”

“Obviously, the cinematography of films is art, just as a still shot can be art. If I'm watching a Wes Anderson movie, the colour palettes alone, and the way they're painted, could be art. With music, you're a little bit limited, of course, because it's only audio.”

“I like the anonymity that directors can have about their films.”

“I always felt that if I was going to do a movie, I wanted it to be authentic.”

“One of the things I'm real proud of is I just made a deal with 20th Century Fox, and I've got my own production company now. I'm developing some television and movies for other people because I have a lot of fresh new ideas. To write is what I love the most.”

“In the movie I realized, I had the luxury of getting to see how the other person feels.”

“Americans love to talk about the Constitution and how it protects the rights of every citizen and promises freedom to every citizen, but it's also a country based on racism and they don't talk about that too much and every time there's a film which deals with it there's certain parts of the country that feel uncomfortable.”

“It just happened that we did [Fences] seven years ago on Broadway. Scott Rudin brought me August Wilson's original screenplay for it, and I realized I hadn't read the play. So I read it. Then I realized that Troy (my character) was 53 - and I was 55 at the time. I realized I better hurry up! I might be too old!”

“I never tell anyone what to take away from a movie.”

“When you make a movie it's always interesting, because you end up in places you never would as a normal visitor or tourist.”

“It's simple: You get a part. You play a part. You play it well. You do your work and you go home. And what is wonderful about movies is that once they're done, they belong to the people. Once you make it, it's what they see. That's where my head is at.”

“Years ago, even prior to 9/11, I did a movie called "The Siege." I did a lot of research with the FBI and the CIA. And I was amazed at that time (I guess we might all know it now) how little information they shared with each other. So after that, I'm not surprised by anything.”