Film Quotes

I feel that, at this point in my career, I don't want to do another television show. I don't want to do a film.

When you make a documentary film, after many years the only thing you remember is what you put into the film, not what you took out.

If you make a great film full of emotion, of pathos, people want to continue to know more, to work harder.

A film set is a workplace for me; it's my office, and nobody really wants to be in a stressful work environment.

I'd like to do a really masculine film.

I have always meticulously storyboarded my films from beginning to end.

I don't want to sound like too much of a drama queen! But I'm not going to tell you, 'Oh, it's just so much fun.' It's work [working on film].

I would rather my films be well-known than I be well-known.

I like films to be complete in their written form.

If a film is very clever and well-written, that's what gives you freedom as a director.

I didn't hang around films. I don't know if I'd ever seen Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes.

I think TV is much more the writer's medium and film is about the director and their vision and how you can collaborate with them and see that through to the end. They are so different

You make a horror film that's not very good. You'd be joining a long line, in a long video aisle, of stuff that doesn't work.

When jobs come up, like a low-budget film like The Last Exorcism, you say yes and you see where it takes you.

[Jack Reacher] is the longest I'd ever shot anything - and let's be clear, this is my first studio feature film - so there was a huge learning curve.

Film and television was so strange to me because I didn't grow up in the business, I didn't know anything about it.

I was always into film, but theater was my entry point. I always felt like film didn't make sense to me, as a kid.

I love making genre films. It's something I've really been attracted to since I was a kid, mostly because, as a kid, it was forbidden fruit.

I mean when the play was on in New York I was starting to get film offers coming through, and since the film's come out I get offered more than I used to, but it happens incrementally.

The theater is a tough place. It's not cushioned the way it is in film and television.

The truth is, no matter how modest Steven [Sebring] is, he was obsessed with the outcome of the film [Dream of Life]. Every single frame was important to him.

I think the film [Dream of Life] is life-affirming.

I think that there is an air of experience and aesthetic sophistication that weaves in with the amateur aspects of the film [Dream of Life]; it gives the film a certain elegance.

If someone didn't want to be filmed, or my children said, "Don't film me anymore," [Steven Sebring] didn't try to sneak a shot or cajole them; he just respected their wishes.

Sometimes I get lost in watching a film. The sorrow, or the frustration, is when it doesn't happen for a long time.

The film [Dream of Life] is the way it is because it was the rhythm of my life, and also because the director and the editor are both gifted and both fine human beings.

The film [Dream of Life] looks at a time in my life.

One of my groupies gave me a film that they made, and it ended up being amazing, so I got it shown at South by Southwest. If I can help get their stuff out there, then great.

Fellini was [David] Lynch's master and his biggest idol, and he believed in Fellini's view that film is a dream, it's not reality. It's all about delving into the unconscious.

After working with so many great actors and acting students in film school, it was a whole other thing working with Luke [Kirby].

I think it's more important to try and make a good film than give a good performance.

[Swiss Armi Man] was a super joyful film to go make. I mean, there was stuff that was, like, totally bananas. But it was kind of par for the course every day with that stuff.

I would say that the emotional content of the film [Swiss Army Man] took me by surprise, and sometimes I would probably want to capture the unique tone of it.

If you could call me buff, my version of buff was when I finished that film [Swiss Army Man].

I love that it's such an uncynical film [Swiss Army Man]. I think it's got a lot of love in there, and I think that's a nice thing in this day and age.

I regretted not being a person in shape many a day while we were making this film [Swiss Army Man].

I think it was a lot of trust as well [between me and Daniel Radcliffe]. If we didn't have that, it could be a very painful film [ Swiss Army Man] to go make.

The broad comedy thing is really hard to do on film.

I don't think film actors need training, really.

I've very critical of myself, and film has been an adjustment for me.

Most of the films that I've written, made in my life, I've written. Not all, but most I would say.

There's a script, then you're going to shoot the script and then you cut that and then that's the end of the film. And that's never really been how I've seen it.

You don't make a film because the audience is ready for it. You make a film because you have questions that are in your gut.

I wanted to do a political film that is as nonpartisan as can be, because I wanted to do a story that was American. I wanted to tell an American tragedy.

There are many ingredients that go into making a film. It baffles me, what works and what doesn't.

To me some of the funniest movies would be probably categorized in the dramatic genre, and likewise some of the most dramatic films, or films that have the most dramatic moments, are in comedies.

I was looking for people who didn't have any preconceptions about films, what I call the "post-rules" generation.

The films that I love are very straightforward stories, like really old-fashioned stuff.

As I have got older and become a father, there's less and less time for films.

I don't miss scenes at all the way that I used to miss them when I was younger making a film. It's actually quite fun to get rid of them now.