Independent films have a very different cachet than success films.

The angel said, “I like black-and-white films more than color because they’re more artificial. You have to work harder to overcome your disbelief. It’s sort of like prayer.

You have to want to be in the company of those you’re making films about.

It’s not fair that people wrote that all of my films had not done well. There were a few films like ‘Nippu,’ ‘Devudu Chesina Manushulu’ and ‘Sarostaru’ which were really bad. But, ‘Veera’ and ‘Dharuvu’...

One of my favorite films is ‘Dumb and Dumber.’

I’m more critical of the films I make than anyone else.

The demand in India is to have a hit, which becomes a promotion for the movie and makes people come to the theater. You have five songs and different promotions based on those. But when...

We have all sorts of conditions of booksellers: one is fanatic on the subject of libraries. He thinks that every public library should be dynamited. Another thinks that moving pictures will destroy the book trade....

Motion picture making is a very, very involved affair. It is completely my baby. I’m a thorough professional. I plan films right from the conception of an idea to its final execution.

I want to be an all round entertainer, I want to act, make films, make albums, do whatever I can.

We have to look forward and keep filming new films and not get stuck in the past.

I keep meeting directors that are so irresistible. I only do irresistible films, because I don’t need to act to feel myself alive.

Most of the animated films I watched, the emotions are all prepackaged like canned music, the hand actions, the sighs.

I do like fantasy films.

The films I want to make, I really want to be passionate about.

Honestly speaking, I don’t like my films. When I watch them, I see a lot of scope for improvement, so if I were to see any of my films, like ‘Dhoom,’ I might say… ‘It...

My favorite types of movies definitely aren’t thrillers, but at the same time you can’t deny the genius of Hitchcock’s films.

There’s only so much you can do with the material you’re given, … A lot of films are very male-oriented, but this is a male-dominated industry. Let’s not lie. I don’t care what character I...

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

The financing of my films has always been international.

When I left Ohio when I was 17 and ended up in New York and realised that not all films had the giant crab monsters in them, it really opened up a lot of things...

If I see my films described as ‘quirky’ or, even worse, ‘snarky’ one more time, I’m going to probably seriously consider an early retirement. All these years, I’ve labored under the conceit that they were...

My films play only in Bengal, and my audience is the educated middle class in the cities and small towns. They also play in Bombay, Madras and Delhi where there is a Bengali population.

You can have ambiguity in television that you are not allowed in film… at least in Hollywood studio films.

I like acting, but I like filmmaking better. I went to film school. I want to make films.

I would love to occasionally do English-speaking films, but the script is as important for me as the director.

Usually, watching yourself is pretty awful. People think we all love watching our own films. We don’t. We cringe away from it.

I am a keen observer of my own films; I also try to discover myself through the movies I make.

I’m part of that generation that grew up watching TV, and being an actor was all about being on TV or being in films.

One of my favorite films is ‘Late Spring’ by Yasujiro Ozu. To me, it represents film as art.

What most people do is they make terrific films, one in three if you’re very lucky, maybe one in five. So you just have to keep on, you have to get through the bad bits.

I categorically resist this idea that films are supposed to be autobiographical and the only stories you tell are about your own life.

With all of my films if I get one bad review and a bunch of good reviews the bad one is the only one that will stay with me, which really sucks!

I have a lot of incomplete short films and incomplete scripts out there.

I was very young, and I was on vacation with my family, and there was a retrospective of old films, and one of them was ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ with Claude Rains that was...

The gritty indie films are a lot rarer than the films that aspire to fill multiplexes.

I am a big scaredy-cat; horror films terrify me.

The best films come about through experimentation.

I see bits and pieces of me in all the characters in my films.

My good films were independent and my bad films were not.

I hate to look at myself in a mirror, and I never go and see films.

If I didn’t have my films as an outlet for all the different sides of me, I would probably be locked up.

The only fear I have is that I will wake up one day and nobody will allow me to do films. This is a fear every actor has.

I wanted a mix of ‘B’ films and first-class films, because I don’t look down my nose at ‘B’ films. We have a very good collection of Randolph Scott westerns.

Everything makes me nervous – except making films.

Multiplicity was a movie that tested really well. People seeing the movie really liked it, but then the studio couldn’t market it. We opened on a weekend with nine other films.

The theatre has always been voraciously omnivorous. Dramatists have always raided every medium to find grist to their mill: myths, folk tales, newspapers, novels, films, works of art of all kinds.

I always start with characters rather than with a plot, which many critics would say is very obvious from the lack of plot in my films – although I think they do have plots –...

Films are a part of my being, they don’t define me.

Well the Bombay film wasn’t always like how it is now. It did have a local industry. There were realistic films made on local scenes. But it gradually changed over the years.