I do a film if it interests me, has a connect with the audience and some entertainment value. The rest doesn't matter.
I find that in the process of making a film you're constantly discovering things that you never even imagined would work at the beginning. Actors come into the film and do things you never even imagined. Production designers come in, the director of photography lights it in a way that you never imagined. So, it's always evolving, always exciting.
The problem with the British film industry is the nervousness and insecurity about - and genuflection toward - Los Angeles.
That's what I like about Neil Jordan's films: everyone is better at what they do than you are.
As with sound, images are subjective. You and I may not see the same color red as red, but we will probably agree that the image on the screen is a digital image or film image, based on contrast, bit depth, and refresh rate.
It's hard to get personal films off the ground, and it's hard developing them.
Well, there's two things I have criteria for doing a film: The script, which is the story, and the filmmaker, and it's a filmmaker's medium. I like really strong directors, and so when I do a film, I'm out there to serve the director, really, which is in turn to serve the script, to serve the director cause he's the one making the film. I relied on Todd Haynes for that.
Once your film is done, you can't explain to people what something was supposed to be. You can't give them footnotes. It all has to be there.
I've told people who have just started to make a film that the one thing you might experience is this feeling that everybody is conspiring against you, because you're not necessarily able to tell what's real and what's not.
The audience has to understand that if the film is going to have any meaning for them. If they are going to empathize with the characters, they have to visualize the process of concentration involved in making every move.
Theater is far superior to film in poetry, in abstract poetry.
The difference between this film [Your highness] and Pineapple Express was pretty much in the logistics of the technical ambition of the movie, and the size and scope of the movie. Pineapple Express was a great success, and that was something that we wanted to capitalize on, but we wanted this movie to be bigger, more adventuresome, bring a bigger audience to the movie, and challenge ourselves to do something new.
I wasn't that much of a Disney buff growing up, but I love the mystical and magical nature of Peter Pan, and I have connected with that character through Owen [Suskind] in making this film ["Life, Animated"].
I think people are uncomfortable seeing pregnant women, particularly with any kind of conflict. [Pregnancy is] very much a projection of life and love, but it's also very complicated. People have very complicated pregnancies. They could be accidental or people suffer depression, and that was a really interesting thing for me. And a challenging thing. I have not been pregnant. I don't know what that's like, let alone to be really conflicted about it. Acting in the film about pregnancy was a really interesting thing to do.
Seeing David Mackenzie's work in "Starred Up," I thought that was a wonderful film.
If you don’t like the films of Samuel Fuller , then you just don’t like cinema.
I want my movies to be audience experiences. As much as I like Michael Haneke, I'm not going to make a Haneke film. That's just not in my DNA.
Everyone thinks that Fight Club is a very important and successful film, but it was a massive box-office failure. Massive. It was a big flop by any commercial-release standard. And it's been a huge hit on DVD. Everything that movie has become has been on DVD. So you can't stake your sense of creative success on this whole box-office-performance matrix, because if you do, you're going to be disappointed most of the time.
Sometimes I make films about scenes other filmmakers would leave out, so I just make the film out of all the things they wouldn't put in. Poetry allows you to do this more than prose, for example.
Audiences are less intrigued, honestly, by battle. They're more intrigued by human relations. If you're making a film about the trappings of the period, and you're forgetting that human relationships are the most engaging part of the storytelling process, then you're in trouble.
