Film Quotes

Try to produce your own films, avoid directing for hire.

I think ultimately if you have a very high expectation of your audience and you know exactly what it is you're trying to express through the medium of film, there will always be an audience for you.

The biggest problem with the independent film sector in Toronto is that they find themselves having to make that budget show on screen.

I feel like they are two different things, and when I write books, they're just books. If they can be movies that's okay. But I would write a novel that couldn't be a film.

I think a film is a failure if it doesn't have an emotional effect. That's the film's failure. Not if it doesn't deliver a message, but if it doesn't have emotional effect or visceral effect.

A theatrical on a tight budget really only becomes about generating critical reviews for you and your film, not revenue.

I think my biggest advice to filmmakers is to look into the many digital platforms that exist for you and your team to distribute your film.

There is lots of pressure to make a GOOD film. And not just a GOOD film but one that will somehow stand out in the sea of GOOD films.

It sounds kind of flighty, filmmaker-y, but I believe films are a piece of art. They are meant to be what they're meant to be, and sometimes the artist is informed by the film of what it needs to be.

It was easy for me to show the films to the studio and the network and say, "This is who I'm hiring."

I just remember not having access to films as a young person who loved films but living in Compton.

All these women had directed movies that I loved on the film festival circuit, but couldn't get a job making television. That's how locked down TV is.

More people have seen 13th on Netflix than have seen all my films put together between the Sundance winners and Selma, and the whole international distribution of film.

I think there are pieces of the film [Age Of Trump] that are even more emotionally resonant and more vital to talk about than ever.

All the films I do, I write the scripts, I direct.

Film 'This Changes Everything' is not a sad story. It's not a slit-your-wrists climate film. It's a story about people who are making change happen.

The book and the film [This Changes Everything] fed into each other in ways that were compounding and very exciting. The pain was shared.

I've always kind of hated films about climate change.

TV and film has defined my entire life.

I had no education in filmmaking. I started with a 8mm camera. I made 34 films, and little by little I gained more experience in filming.

Actually, the only thing I regret is not making more underground films and bringing them with me as historical documents.

Well I think always, when you remake films, I always think the first one is most original, authentic.

I indulged the wild child inside of me - the one that's not aware of danger or fear - for the purity of existence for that character in that film. Of course, behind me they're saying, 'She's crazy!'

People go to extraordinary lengths to get films made.

So as I was growing up, my father was always in the middle of making a film or preparing a film. It was a full-time, all-consuming type of operation.

The people I love the most in the film industry are the writers. And I think they're the people who are most vulnerable and are really open to new ideas. They're the originators, the creators.

If the overall quality of your film depends on what you shot it on, you aren't ready to make a film.

Even back in the '90s, I shot certain things on something that wasn't digital then, but it was on VHS with a smaller camera and we would up it to film.

I've had a lot of movies that didn't get great numbers on test screening, but a lot of times the film was able to survive, or the studio still stayed and supported it.

I don't know that you can do an absurdist film and just have everybody embrace it in terms of filling out cards. I just don't think it happens. So you have to prepare an audience.

I haven't read a review of one of my films for the best part of 10 years.

With television you are producing hours and hours of music and for film it is a shorter experience for both the audience and for you as a composer.

The showrunner relationship in television is what the director relationship in film, there's really no more important relationship.

I knew her work very well and I knew that if she offered me a role in her movie, it wouldn't be something stupid. So I agreed to do the film before I read the script.

Stage and film are just two wildly different animals. Why compare the two?

Make films whenever and however you can - don't take no for an answer.

I think the thriller aspect of this film [Fifty Shades Darker] is what excited me most.

[Fifty Shades Darker director] James Foley directed Fear. And that's what I love about this film, because it has a real sexy thriller element about it.

Everyone has a different approach, but I like to shoot a lot of film anyway.

I didn't make a film because I wanted a starring role. I made a film because I wanted to tell a story and I wanted to prove that I could direct.

I think a lot of good directors listen to music while they're working. The songs just don't become a part of the film. They're replaced.

A picture story just doesn't run like a film. It doesn't have 24 frames per second. It doesn't deal with this illusion of movement.

When you drop your guard in films, the acting process compensates. You get lazy and you start acting.

My line-learning is very special. I like to learn the dialogue of the whole film before I arrive.

The only genre I have any problem with is musicals, but that's just my own tastes it's nothing to do with the films.

The things that inspire people to think are what keeps a film alive.

Lots of crime films are about work. Free Fire could have been about a company of plumbers doing pipe-fixing and stuff. But the plumbing film is not so exciting.

The biggest lesson Stephen Strange learns in this film is it's not all about him.

There's a heroic amount of effort that goes into making him [Doctor Strange] a superhero by the end of the film.

I feel that TV and film feed off each other well. It's more in the perception of the viewer than it is of the actor.