Studios look backward. Filmmakers look forward.
I'm not a very efficient filmmaker. There's a lot of guys, filmmakers like the Coen Brothers who shoot a whole movie and maybe don't use 12 setups. I'm in awe of people like that; I'm just not that guy.
[Steven Spielberg's films] are comforting, they always give you answers and I don't think they're very clever answers. The success of most Hollywood films these days is down to fact that they're comforting. They tie things up in nice little bows and give you answers, even if the answers are stupid, you go home and you don't have to think about it. The great filmmakers make you go home and think about it.
I don't try to make a place in history at all! People put me in the history of cinema because my first film, La pointe-courte, was so ahead of some other filmmakers. Many filmmakers have made resurgent work, and I was just a little ahead of the time.
You know, I feel like my job is to write a book. Then filmmakers come and they make a movie. And they're two really different art forms.
The movie studios, they only like to make - I make a joke, but it's true - if the movie has the word "man" and a number in the title, they'll make it. If it doesn't have that, it's an R-rated raunchy comedy, and that's it. Any other movie that you're going to make is going to be an independent one. So for filmmakers who want to do something other than "man" and a number, it's either independent films or television, which is like the place for real creative filmmakers to go.
A movie is made for an audience and a film is made for both the audience and the filmmakers. I think that The Game is a movie and I think Fight Club's a film. I think that Fight Club is more than the sum of its parts, whereas Panic Room is the sum of its parts. I didn't look at Panic Room and think: Wow, this is gonna set the world on fire. These are footnote movies, guilty pleasure movies. Thrillers. Woman-trapped-in-a-house movies. They're not particularly important.
I've been exploring a lot of different avenues with a number of very different and very, very exciting filmmakers and writers. That's been the trip. I like to find something very, very different from the last thing I did, which might be similar to something I've done before, but as long as it's different from the last thing I did, it keeps me entertained.
There are certain artists and filmmakers who, I get the impression, are trying to show off how bad their characters can be, how immoral their characters can be.
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.
We are not documentarians, we are filmmakers.
Most, especially the young filmmakers, do not see strength in communal or collective existence. They just think they're going to conquer the world as individuals. There is no world like that. In cinema it's always, even in Hollywood, a collective surge.
Now there's a whole generation of filmmakers who grew up making their own films with video cameras, and have dined entirely on a diet of popular culture. It's been reflected in a lot of their work. It's self-reflective, it's quite knowing, but it's very literate.
The more unique your film is and unusual it is and difficult it is, the harder it is to get it financed. That's why a lot of good filmmakers are doing television. They do HBO movies.
I don't consider myself to be particularly gifted in the way that other filmmakers are gifted.
The more we can be honest about ourselves as filmmakers, than the more we can be honest with people who see the films.
I feel safe in saying this, and that is that Peter Weir is without a doubt one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. I'd open a door in a movie for him if he asked me to.
I think I've always admired sort of dynamic filmmakers, which doesn't shy away from strong expressions. Which might be a little more theatrical at some points.
There will be new and exciting filmmakers to come and movies that will be great successes.
The real beauty in my professional experience has been friendships and collaborations with filmmakers.