If you’re early, you’re on time. If you’re on time, you’re late.

I’m not a film buff. I don’t watch a lot of movies.

Film is the greatest educational medium the world has ever known.

Can anyone capable of genuinely appreciating Mozart and Mizoguchi possibly say that he is not, in that respect, immeasurably better off than someone whose cultural horizon is limited to bingo and The Black and White...

The sad thing is that when movies like this fail, executives think that proves there’s no audience for unusual, original pictures – because they think they’ve made one.

In this business, until you’re known as a monster, you’re not a star

Many things in this period have been hard to bear, or hard to take seriously. My own profession went into a protracted swoon during the Reagan-Bush-Thatcher decade, and shows scant sign of recovering a critical...

And we hate this possibility in movies; we hate this “both” shit. “Both” comes off as sloppy characterization, muddy filmmaking, lack of focus. … But I submit that the real reason we criticized and disliked...

The camera has a mind of its own–its own point of view. Then the human bearer of time stumbles into the camera’s gaze–the camera’s domain of pristine space hitherto untraversed is now contaminated by human...

But I reckon that this realm of higher needs, of something more than just forgetting about everyday life, of mere recreation, this realm of needs has been clearly neglected by us.

A lot of film people are like that– especially the ones below the line, the blue-collar guys, the grunts. They like putting their hands on the equipment and getting it to do things for them....

…I take photographs and I film my own home movies, I have a darkroom as well… but I can’t be a photojournalist like you… I can’t be anything… still, at least I can take photographs,...

The film director, in many instances, has to swallow somebody else’s decision about the final form of something. It’s so hard as to be intolerable.

When less than everything has been said about a subject, you can still think on further. The alternative is for the audience to be presented with a final deduction (…) no effort on their part.What...

Your audience is your adversary. If you don’t have one get one – imagine it. Imagine it now. To whom is your story addressed and why? Audience is always a creative act of the imagination....

Love me for me, not for how much I resemble my clones, or how handsome they are, or how brilliant they are, or how much you want to have sex with all of them, at...

The cinema is truth 24 frames-per-second

Home is what we know we ought to want but can’t really take. America is not so much a home for anyone as a universal dream of home, a wish whose attraction depends upon its...

In America, film is the highest form of art that the public aspires to. People will come to me and say ‘Oh, your book was so good, they ought to make a movie out of...

Well, as I was saying, it costs a lot to be authentic, madam. And one can’t be stingy with these things, because you are more authentic the more you resemble what you’ve dreamed you are....

In drama, the characters should determine the story. In melodrama, the story determines the characters.

Over the years, I have been subjected to many indignities, all for the sake of Art. If I ever catch him, I’m going to kill the guy.

The body lay outside an abandoned, boarded-up theater. The theater had started as a first-run movie house, many years back when the neighborhood had still been fashionable. As the neighborhood began rotting, the theater began...

Suppose every photo of me ever taken was an infinitesimal piece? Every magazine ad, every negative, every frame of motion picture film – another tiny molecule of me, stolen away to feed an audience that...

Hollywood’s Studio Era was part of a Golden Age because it didn’t need profanity (unlike reality-television today)

The film libraries on some of these channels.” Elmina said. “I swear. There was one on last night. I couldn’t sleep. After I saw, it, I was afraid ro sleep. Have you seen Black Narcissus,...

We make, see, and love films, not digitals. To convert all of our movies, home videos, theaters, photographs and television to digital would be like telling a painter to throw away his brushes and canvas...

I have often thought it was very arrogant to suppose you could make a film for anybody but yourself.

Tibby sat on the outside of a group of kids in the film program. There was a lot of dark clothing and heavy footwear, and quite a few piercings glinting in sunlight. They had invited...

I got hold of a copy of the video that showed how Saddam Hussein had actually confirmed himself in power. This snuff-movie opens with a plenary session of the Ba’ath Party central committee: perhaps a...

Oh how Shakespeare would have loved cinema!

Cinema is a mixed form. L’Avventura has characters, it has social context, and these things are not trivial. Its plot is the disappearance of a disappearance. Possibly the most frightening plot imaginable. Forgetting the dead,...

That’s the greatest sin a director can commit; to make a film simply because he wants to make a film.

Up until then, whenever anyone had mentioned the possibility of making a film adaptation, my answer had always been, ‘No, I’m not interested.’ I believe that each reader creates his own film inside his head,...

There was a super-8 steel town somewhere, where all the forgotten things in the cruel world ended up eventually, Mandy was sure of it… this place, she decided, was called Smog City.

Creativity is a gift each one of us is born with, irrespective of our backgrounds and entitlement of culture, The challenge is to hold onto this gift as we go through life. To nurture it....

I have no rules. For me, it’s a full, full experience to make a movie. It takes a lot of time, and I want there to be a lot of stuff in it. You’re looking...

… Play the age as comedy if you want to get away with murder.

i’ve always wanted, basically, to do research in the form of a spectacle.

Artists use frauds to make human beings seem more wonderful than they really are. Dancers show us human beings who move much more gracefully than human beings really move. Films and books and plays show...

In my opinion, there are two things that can absolutely not be carried to the screen: the realistic presentation of the sexual act and praying to God.

To Bette Davis, Gena Rowlands, Romy Schneider… To all actresses who have played actresses, to all women who act, to all men who act and become women, to all the people who want to be...

The varying physical characteristics of the actors may also necessitate changes. Sean Connery is six feet four. Dustin Hoffman isn’t.

I’ve seen and swam and climbed and lived and driven and filmed. Should it all end tomorrow, I can definitely say there would be no regrets. I am very lucky, and I know it. I...

When I took my clothes off in Blue Velvet, I wanted to convey the brutality of sex abuse. I wanted to look like a quartered cow hanging in a butcher shop as well as disturbingly...

Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls.

One of the common themes you will read in interview after interview is the call to keep fighting for your vision. This is a message to women directors, producers, writers—anyone who wants to work in...

Detik itu juga aku merasa seolah-olah jantungku diremas. Ah. Inilah sebabnya mengapa aku menyukai film dokumenter.Film dokumenter membuat aku sadar bahawa hidup ini nyata, bahwa dunia yang kutinggali ini tidak sempurna.

People say that a time machine can’t be invented, but they’ve already invented a device that can stop time, cameras are the world’s first time machines.

Kodachrome… it gives us those nice, bright colors,gives us the greens of summers,makes ya think all the world’s a sunny day,Oh yeah!I’ve got a Nikon camera, I’d love to take a photograph,so mama don’t take…my...