Elia Kazan Quotes - Page 3

I question the value of stars. I think they're overrated. They get too much money, too much praise.

I'm going to make a film where not one word is really important. I'm going to make it all action.

It's difficult, if not impossible, to get away with anything false before the camera. That instrument penetrates the husk of the actor; it reveals what's truly happening - if anything, if nothing. A close-up demands absolute truth. It's a severe and awesome truth

I wouldn't go up on a stage now if you paid a thousand dollars for one minute of acting. It's a nasty experience. You're up there all by yourself. You're so damn exposed.

I was the true future. I understood Communism better than they did.

The world was like a huge red carpet out ahead of me to be walked on. And it stretched on and on, no end.

With kids you can take a chance but casting a guy at 45 is different. You don't discover somebody that age. If an actor hasn't made it by that time he probably has no talent.

Some directors, like Stevens [George Stevens], shoot full circle, 360 degrees, and that's what's right for them. I generally shoot at about a seven to one ratio. But part of that is because I've worked on every screenplay, so I'm further along in the visual concept.

I'm very pro-America, but I feel it necessary to keep in touch with Europe to maintain a perspective.

I've lost many of my best friends... I'm going to satisfy myself now, not the critics, not even my friends.

People made suggestions, but, hell, I don't actually listen to anybody, I just go my own way.

Truth gets buried, that's why people write autobiographies.

I joined the Communist Party late in the summer of 1934. I got out a year and a half later.

I was both very successful and very left; the living demonstration of how you could be on the left and still be in the gossip columns and be envied for the money you made.

Criticism- a big bite out of someone's back.

I think there should be collaboration, but under my thumb.

A film director has to get a shot, no matter what he does. We're desperate people.

The Communists automatically violated the daily practices of democracy to which I was accustomed.

Very often the Group actor is a critic when he's acting and an actor when he's criticizing.

I owe Bankhead a gift; she made a director out of me.

I want to thank the Academy for its courage and generosity.

For years after I resigned, I was still faithful to their way of thinking. But not in the American Communists.

I don't remember anything anybody said in any Jack Ford picture. Nothing happens except action.

I have no spy stories to tell, because I saw no spies. Nor did I understand, at that time, any opposition between American and Russian national interest.

I was taken in by what might be called the Hard Times version of the Communists' advertising or recruiting technique.