Film Quotes

I'm just one of those people that if I sit down to watch a horror film, I put my hands over my face and I cry a lot and I don't see half of the film because I'm too upset.

I had this spooky psychological thing about 'The Piano' before it began, which was how everybody was going to go nuts on the set. Because a film tends to set up the way people are going to behave.

I think feature film can be quite conservative, because you have to now get audiences to come out, and it's quite a hard thing to do. Of course, television can be conservative too.

With 'Bright Star' and with 'The Piano,' too, I felt a kind of sadness about it being in such a different era, because of my lack of experience with the era. And one of the ways I'd get over it is to remind myself that every film, even if it's contemporary, creates its own world.

It's physically and psychologically exhausting to make a film.

You have to draw on your unconscious when you make a film - you can't worry about whether it's costing a lot of money.

And I'm auditioning right now for a movie, and then I have a script that I'm reading right now for a horror film, and I'm meeting for a couple of television shows that I just had yesterday, and pretty much was offered one of them.

I was going to go make a film in Greece. if they caught you with this much marijuana, they threw you in jail, no questions asked, and I was trying to stuff it in my deodorant bottles. I thought, what I am doing?

Film is one of the three universal languages, the other two: mathematics and music.

One of my favorite things to do is not to speak on screen. In theater it's different because there's a lot of emphasis on language - it's a different medium. But that is one of the most wonderful things about film. A person's face can say so much more than their voice can.

Truth is, generally I like film festivals; somewhere at some level there's an exchange of ideas.

Film is an editor's medium. You can create very good raw material and they can make it horrible, or you can do not so well and they can make it beautiful. You don't really know.

I don't have a preference between theatre and film; I like to do both. But I will say that there's something about theatre that is more nourishing and sustaining than film ever can be.

Film is fragmented and gets into lots of other people's hands. There are a lot of pleasures that theatre gives me. You get to perform uninterrupted.

I'll never be able to really see a film that I'm in.

I didn't so much choose the film as director Claire Denis chose me.

I'm developing a record company. I'm learning how to supervise music on a film.

In an action film you act in the action. If it's a dramatic film you act in the drama.

When you finish a film, if you believed in your character, you're empty.

On a film set everyone is very cool. Well, blase really.

I always wanted to do films. I'd gone to New York early in 1976 and did a lot of theater, but I really wanted to chase the paths of people like Pacino and Lemmon and those guys. Alan Arkin. Film was where I wanted to go.

When people don't like the film, I can take a bullet. I don't mind you talking about me, but I'm protective of my actors, because they bared their soul for me.

Editing is where movies are made or broken. Many a film has been saved and many a film has been ruined in the editing room.

To me, length is an artificial and arbitrary factor in a film.

Film-makers in Belgium are seen as arts and crafts makers. It is a small country. There is not really a film industry there at all.

I studied science and journalism at the University of Colorado and then got interested in experimental film there and started doing my own films.

I wanted to be a martial arts film star when I was a teenager.

I never enjoyed working in a film.

It's rare to find a film that goes for broke and says, 'To hell with the consequences.'

Many thrillers follow such reliable formulas that you can look at what's happening and guess how much longer a film has to run.

One sign of a great actor is when he can be alone by himself on the screen, doing almost nothing, and producing one of a film's defining moments.

One difference between film noir and more straightforward crime pictures is that noir is more open to human flaws and likes to embed them in twisty plot lines.

Ridley Scott's 'Prometheus' is a magnificent science-fiction film, all the more intriguing because it raises questions about the origin of human life and doesn't have the answers.

A film is a terrible thing to waste.

I think film and television are really a director's medium, whereas theatre is the actor's medium.

What goes down on film is different to what you see with the naked eye.

Yeah, I'd like to get the girl and at least make it through the film.

You never really know as an actor; it's completely out of your control, in terms of editing, and music, and film stock, shot selection, and what takes they use.

A film has its own life and takes its own time.

The biggest difference for me is momentum. On a smaller film you get to shoot sometimes four or five scenes a day and you've got to do the tight schedule. I think I really feel the luxuries of a big budget film.

There is also an artistic element which is lead by the film maker. Issues of what is reality and objectivity are as always relevant as someone is going to edit the film.

While mainstream media is led by profit, ratings and popularist culture and filtered by the current political climate, Alternative Media is lead solely by the convictions of the campaign and film maker.

When you make a film like this, you must have the highest expectations of your audience. Having worked in situations where we have the lowest expectations of our audience.

I've just been very, very lucky with the film having been introduced in the right way.

The whole film is about people being convinced that they can reduce themselves to their archetypes.

When I was planning Family Viewing, the Ontario Film Development Corporation came into existence.

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 film camera's ability to physically move through space, not zoom through space - every time we have a video camera the movement is through zoom; every time we have a film camera it is a physical movement.

The scariest people to turn a movie over to are always the people who are drawing up the poster, because that's the first impression it's going to make. And very often it's portraying a very different film from the one the actors actually did.

Language is much closer to film than painting is.

The adrenaline feeling of jumping out of cliffs and bikes and all of that is very specific to the film. In 'Pac Rim' I'm not doing that so much. There isn't that touch stonework for me in it, but there is a lot of action.

I'll just say it: I love Sundance; my very first film won Sundance.

I'm trying to interpret the film through the director's head, but it all comes out through me. So, a composer is kind of like a psychic medium.

In Tim's films, more than most, if you miss the tone, you don't get the film.

I really liked doing a number of the projects and directors, and etc., etc., I knew about half-way through that I would never be doing that again. It's just not me. I really am happy as a part-time film composer, not a full-time film composer.

I think that's one of the things that has always put me in kind of an odd niche. It's that all of my understanding of orchestral music is via film, not via classical music like it's supposed to be. To me it's the same, it doesn't make any difference.

I would have to say I might do some stuff, but it's the film that's appealing. I was raised on film. My musical experience is all via film, it's not from classical music.

Or certainly I would need time - which I would love to have but there almost never is on a film - to just spend a week with a roomful of guys laying down these patterns.

And you know, we did it as an independent film, and we weren't expecting it to be on television, and Lifetime ended up buying it. And the viewers responded intensely to that film.

I can't remember what the last film I saw was, as I can't smoke or drink in cinemas.

I would like to sing the theme tune of a big film - something like 'Titanic.'

One of the fine moments in 1940s film is no longer than a blink: Bogart, as he crosses the street from one bookstore to another, looks up at a sign.

I think it's insulting to an audience to make them sit and watch a film and then give them a message in one sentence.

The fact is I'm not making a film in order to draw pictures or make images about Iran.

Unless you're trying to make a movie on the sly, there's no way to get around this. If you want to use public spaces, film on the streets, have the cooperation of the police, you have to have a permit.

There's no wrong way to experience a film.

You ought to have a perspective when you're making a film.

I didn't grow up watching film but as a Ukrainian-American, music and stories and dance are crucial.

No I didn't audition, I didn't even know David Lynch till the week before I started the film.

If I was not allowed to mention that I was in the film industry, I could go six months without getting a kiss.

'Hunger' definitely changed my life, in terms of being recognized by filmmakers, since that was very much a filmmakers' film.

I always approach film as a fan.

The director is the only person on the set who has seen the film. Your job as a director is to show up every day and know where everything will fit into the film.

Even if I set out to make a film about a fillet of sole, it would be about me.

A good opening and a good ending make for a good film provide they come close together.