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.

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)

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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...

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 wish I’d done everything on Earth with you.

Perhaps vaguely aware that his movie so completely lacks gravitas, Moore concludes with a sonorous reading of some words from George Orwell. The words are taken from 1984 and consist of a third-person analysis of...

. . . push that neurotic girl . . . in front of the camera . . . and that whining mop would magically blossom into a warm, lovely, poised and confident actress.” Capra obviously...

In the end, everything is found to be wanting.

Or take this girl, for example. At a meeting just outside Paris, a fifteen-year-old girl came up to me and said that she’d been to see [The Double Life of] Véronique. She’d gone once, twice,...

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...

It’s hard for me to talk about love,’ she said. ‘I think movies are the way I do that.

Censors tend to do what only psychotics do: they confuse reality with illusion.

I foresee no possibility of venturing into themes showing a closer view of reality for a long time to come. The public itself will not have it. What it wants is a gun and a...

There is no greater solitude than that of the samurai unless it is that of the tiger in the jungle… Perhaps…

I would rather be told an R-rated truth than a G-rated lie.

Cinema is the ultimate pervert art. It doesn’t give you what you desire – it tells you how to desire.

It’s tough, man. Unless it’s a tentpole, sequel, remake, or over-the-top comedy, that’s all the studios are even doing. They’ve kind of admitted they’re not in the business of doing anything else. The slightest level...

[on Martin Freeman playing Bilbo Baggins] It was great. I got to hang out with him, and I kept a straight face for a bit and then I started giggling because I know Martin, I...

Just watch any husband arguing with his wife about something insignificant; listen to what they say and watch how their residual emotions manifest when the fight is over. It’s so formulaic and unsurprising that you...

Avoid the tyranny of the reasonable voice…it will guarantee a complacency of never trying anything adventurous…

To make a real independent film where the filmmaker is in charge creatively, one must sacrifice personal, financial, and physical well-being.