Curtis Hanson Quotes

I had a checkered early career, for sure, with a lot of very unhappy experiences where pictures got taken away, re-cut, re-titled... all the nightmares one hears about.

What you care about [movie] is whether it's moving you, or whether you're caught up in it.

You can dress it up, but it comes down to the fact that a movie is only as good as its script.

Hollywood, of course, is the city of illusion.

Whereas to write, all you need is paper and an idea, so I felt that writing might be my stepping stone.

Self-awareness and self-esteem. Those aren't female issues, those are human issues.

Put simply, there are many people who want to make movies and very few opportunities for them to do it.

I grew up as a reader as well as a movie-lover, so many of the novelists I admired - and so many of the great filmmakers I loved - were self-taught.

Consequently, it's so gratifying to then make a picture that's successful and gives you leverage to have better circumstances than you've ever had, before the next time out.

Consequently, their school [film-school ] was the school of life, and it was very much reflected in their work.

You can imagine what it was like for me to actually be sitting in a room with matching typewriters, working under the tutelage of this guy I so admired, both as a filmmaker and as a man.

I wrote a couple of scripts on spec that didn't get made but got some attention, and I then got offers to write professionally.

Most scripts are so linear and simplistic in their plotline.

I make that distinction only because I came to it strictly as someone who was just a lover of storytellers and cinematic storytellers.

I approach the movies I make as a movie-lover as much as a movie-maker.

A day doesn't go by when I don't get a compliment on L.A. Confidential, for example.

I look for characters that interest me, and a story that keeps me involved and makes me want to know what happens next.

I don't think of the marketplace as teen-oriented or teen-dominated. I think of it as dominated by high-concept, in marketing especially.

Pittsburgh has this rich industrial past, when it was the heart of the U.S. steel industry, and it burned out as the industry burned out and moved elsewhere.

I had always wanted to tell a story that was set in Los Angeles in the '50s, because that's where I grew up, and it was the city of my childhood memories.

Rob Lowe, who I thought was really good in the movie [ Bad Influence], had his performance overshadowed by this sort of tabloid approach to him and the movie.

That love of movies is very much alive in me.

Having done several of them and also loving other kinds of movies, I'm also tougher on suspense stories in terms of finding one that really excites and surprises me.

I love suspense movies, because in a sense they're the most dreamlike of any genre, and I'm sure I'll make another one.

What I try to do is give each actor an environment in which they can do their best work.

I can't speak to how Michael [Douglas] approached it in terms of his process.

Here [in Wonder Boys] I had this group of characters where you didn't know which were the important ones or what direction they were heading.

It was a unique experience in several ways, because I don't think Sam [Fuller] had ever collaborated with another writer over his whole career.

First of all, Sam Fuller left a group of extraordinary movies that are unique, that are "Fuller-esque," as one might say, which makes them stand apart from any other director's films.

We're not used to seeing movies, especially with physical action, when it isn't the man who comes in to save the day.

I had the great fortune to actually become friends with Sam [Fuller] and ultimately collaborate with him on White Dog, which we wrote together.

I didn't look at it as a transition so much, because I never intended to have a career as a journalist, writing about people who make movies.

Samuel Fuller pictures were both written and shot in such an unusual way that his voice came through loud and clear, and it made a big impression on me.

My very first professional writing credit was on a movie called The Dunwich Horror, and Roger Corman was the executive producer.

His [Sam Fuller] self-discipline was amazing. No matter what happened, he'd always go out to his Royal Upright typewriter and just keep working on his stories, his "yarns" as he called them.

I was a journalist and wrote about filmmakers, but I didn't review movies per se.

I'm still a great movie fan, and I guess that's the answer to your question.

I was never a critic.

That's what I love about Michael Douglas' performance in Wonder Boys, because I feel like he surprises audiences that know him from very different roles in his other work.

When I'm casting a picture, I think who I'd like to see in it if I was sitting in a theater. Who would surprise me?