John Boorman Quotes

I only storyboard scenes that require special effects, where it is necessary to communicate through pictures.

You can't get an actor to do something that is beyond his range, so you have to be aware of the range of the actor and, if necessary, alter the part to suit the actor.

All the great legends are Templates for human behavior. I would define a myth as a story that has survived.

The more extreme and the more expressed that passion is, the more unbearable does life seem without it. It reminds us that if passion dies or is denied, we are partly dead.

Black and white is much closer to the condition of dreaming. It links you to the subconscious and I think that was part of the great appeal of movies originally.. this strange otherness.

I was in Japan, and my assistant director had worked with Kurosawa. I used quite of number of Kurosawa's crew.

It's so easy to manipulate an audience, but it's nearly always clear that you are being manipulated. I think even people that are not critically attuned are aware of cynical manipulation in film.

Movie-making is the process of turning money into light. All they have at the end of the day is images flickering on a wall.

What is passion? Passion is surely the becoming of a person.

Black-and-white gives you that sort of parallel world. Also, it's very close to the condition of dreaming, to the unconscious.

When actors are being defensive and defending their position, that is when you get less than good acting.

I think most films are too predictable. They follow familiar patterns. I suppose audiences like to know where they stand but I like films that take me by surprise, take unexpected turns and twists.

There's always been this strand of filmmaking in Britain which is like socialist neo-realism. That's always been there. I've never been part of that, really; I've been much closer to fantasy.

I love green. Green is the color of nature, trees. I'm a tree freak. I spend a lot of my time planting trees, nurturing them, and studying them. It's one of the colors I couldn't live without.

I'm trying to suggest a kind of Middle Earth, in Tolkien terms. It's a contiguous world; it's like ours but different.

The resistance to black-and-white is huge, in the way that you have to sell the film. It's difficult to distribute around the world.

And you poor creatures--who conjured you out of the clay? Is God in show business, too?

What we need is someone to abolish the House Of Lords, get rid of the Royal Family.

There are always forces at work in a society, which are really forces of censorship - either religious bodies or zealots who are always putting pressure on things, whether it's books or art or film.