Film Quotes - Page 49

In American films, Russians are often portrayed like cartoon villains without clear motivations.

My films are a form of psychoanalysis, except that it is I who am paid, which changes everything.

I never ever see a film of mine after I release it to the public. I see it when I shoot it in my dailies and while I'm editing it, re-editing it and reshooting it and all that. By the time it's finished I never want to see it again.

I think Frank Capra was a much craftier filmmaker, a wonderful filmmaker. He had enormous technique, and he knew how to manipulate the public quite brilliantly.

Every film starts with the script.

Film is a medium of clear lines and broad strikes - which can be fantastic - but compared to the subtleties and nuances of a novel, it doesn't even get close.

I have learned a lot through defeats, and, until today, it's - I'm still haunted by defeats, and they do happen. Sometimes, a film of mine is rejected. And how do you deal with it? And you have to learn how to deal with it and survive anyway.

If I had to climb into hell and wrestle the devil himself for one of my films, I would do it.

I've seen the film. And I'll tell you this, I'm glad Chuck Yeager isn't running for President.

The films that I do are deep, introspective, brooding roles that you're in this heavy headspace all the time.

I'd love to be in a 1910s film - the era between the corsets and losing the corsets.

I would have preferred to have been in a film where I could've been more authentic or more human, where the dialogue and my approach to the part could have been more real.

Thank God for small movies and filmmakers who can make movies for not $8 million. Thank God for $8,000 movies.

One of the proudest things for me with this film [The Fourth Phase] is that year after year we put ourselves right out there making it and no one got seriously injured.

If you ask me, you see, I prefer doing film. The reason I'm doing a sitcom is because it's much more approachable.

Film is a truly magical medium.

You can make as many films as you like, but if nobody wants to put them on, whats the point?

Contrary to what many writers imply about the process, nobody forces a writer to sell his work to the film industry.

Emeric [Pressburger] was completely cosmopolitan. That's what makes their [with Michael Powell] films so special. Neither of them thought twice about making a film about a friendship between an Englishman and a German during the Blitz. They were genius.

Every few years when it's been another five years that have passed and I haven't made a film and the depression starts taking over totally, I allow myself to do a commercial. And then I feel really dirty and get to work promptly.

I was influenced by European movies, old Fellini, old Kurosawa - any sort of foreign film.

Nooooooo... favorite film, that's like asking if you have a favorite kid!

Everyone has this conjecture that action films are somewhat less prestigious than dramatic films. Nothing could be further from the truth. I've done them both and this is hard and dangerous.

If I just know in my gut that a film is going to work, I'll fight to the death over it, and I convince myself. When a movie is purely a money job, the film doesn't have the same sort of intensity, and the audience almost senses it, at least that's the way I perceive it. So, yeah, the idea is to do something that you truly, truly believe in.

Another thing that really excites me: I'd like to do multiple versions of the same film.