Top 100 Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu Quotes
#7. When I went to university, I finally got exposed to European films, and they had a strong impact on me. I felt those films had a lot of things to say that weren't getting expressed in the films I was used to seeing.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#8. I think intelligence basically can be in a way defined by the possibility of having two opposite ideas living together and at the same time functioning. That's why I think a smart script has two things living in the same place, and they're absolutely contradictory.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#9. I have a lot of what you might call creative self-loathing - I have pretty high expectations, and they seem to consistently be higher than what I'm able to accomplish.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#12. Antonio Sanchez is from Mexico City. I met him at a Pat Metheny concert. He did a solo, and I thought, 'This is an octopus man!'
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#13. I learned with 'Birdman' that it's liberating when you just lose yourself and go after something that terrifies you.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#17. '21 Grams' is only one story told by three different points of view, but they are really physically connected - literally, with the heart.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#19. In the United States there's not a lot of people interested in foreign language films. Every time, it's more difficult for foreign language films to survive here.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#20. On a transcendental level, a film is not going to be better or worse because there's a prize behind it. The work will be what it is, with or without a prize.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#21. Now is a time where there are so many social networks, such need for validation ... you don't have to be a star or a politician to want to have likes or dislikes. Now there is a disease of popularity in the whole society.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#27. The way America sees Mexico, if they have any sense of it, is like Taco Bell. Our countries are neighbors, and the only hard food to get in America is true Mexican. It's impossible to find, even in L.A. Why is that?
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#32. Americans easily forget that the air they breathe is the same as those in Europe or Africa or Asia; it's the same air as Jesus breathed. I would like them to remember that connection.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#33. I'm scared of horses, and I don't know how to shoot them, but that's what excites me. After 40 years old, if you don't do some things that really terrify you, I don't think they're worth doing.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#35. When you have a fresh point of view that comes from the right side of the heart, it's just so valuable. You can take it or not take it, but just that perspective can give you a lot of strength or make you reflect on a lot of things.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#37. I have been very lucky to have final cut in all my films; everything that is wrong in them is my fault.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#38. Do you know the phrase, 'The word 'water' will not wet you?' It's one thing to write down an idea and another thing entirely to execute it.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#39. When you have something that is bothering you, and then you articulate, take the time to really express it and see it clearly, to recognize. To acknowledge that is already a liberating energy.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#40. I learned there are ways to approach life. You can never change the events, but you can change the way you approach them.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#41. I understand when there's no money for the arts in the government, but it should maybe pressure private companies to support more filmmakers. These exhibition and distribution companies are huge, and there might be incentives for them to invest more in Mexican cinema.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#43. It's not anthrax or terrorism or AIDS that is the worst ill in our world: The most horrible disease in the world is hate.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#44. 'Babel' is about the point of view of others. It literally includes points of views as experienced from the other side. It is not about a hero. It is not about only one country. It is a prism that allows us to see the same reality from different angles.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#45. When you live in a city, as I do, where violence is really in the streets, and people die every day, there's nothing funny about it.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#49. Cannes or any other major festival is basically an animal in its own nature, creating very specific perceptions of films in a moment.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#50. When you are shooting in a conventional way, you put nets around yourself. It's very hard to fall and hit the ground. You can always manipulate things to make it not embarrassing. If the scene is a little bit bad, you can polish it or even take it out. You can hide your mistakes.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#52. I think there's nothing wrong with being fixated on superheroes when you are 7 years old, but I think there's a disease in not growing up.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#53. I think we are defined as human beings through our families, no matter what kind of family - through our relationships with parents, brothers and sisters.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#55. Yes, I am a Mexican, and I have a past and a culture. But what matters is the film itself, not where it was financed or cast.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#57. As a Third World citizen, I always feel that I need to express my point of view. Sometimes the points of view of Third World countries are never expressed. We don't have that possibility, sometimes, to spread what we feel and how we see things.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#58. The corporation and the hedge funds have a hold on Hollywood, and they all want to make money on anything that signifies cinema.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#61. If the audience, in minute 50, is thinking about the way a movie is shot, there's a problem. I want it to permeate emotionally.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#62. I don't like the ironic tone that our pop culture, in the world, has taken. Everything is 'ironic.' Everything is 'cool.'
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#63. I think that when we wrestle with death ... we start fearing life, because then we come to terms with something that is inevitable.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#65. I think that in order to be a film director, one has to be a warrior who shouldn't be defeated by the daily onslaught of problems.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#67. How can [actors] learn their lines and be honest in front of 30 people and all the lights? It makes me cry sometimes. I can't understand how they can be joking with me 30 seconds before, and 40 seconds later they're giving me all this incredible feeling.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#69. One of the reasons why I agreed to do commercials is that they gave me complete freedom. I just had to have the car in it and write a story around it. I wanted to do something serious set in a Latin American country, but again, it was an exercise in style for me.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#72. I like so many different directors: Scorsese, Coppola, Cassavetes, Jarmusch, Gus van Sant, Woody Allen and the greats like Fellini, Bergman, Tarkovsky and among current filmmakers von Trier, Ang Lee, Wong Kar-wai.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#74. The creative process is mysterious; a conversation, a ride in the car, or a melody can trigger something.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#75. I think the arts should get big support, but my country has a lot of needs more important than film. Medication, education, food ... The poverty is overwhelming. There are simply more important things to be attended to.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#76. My mom had very low expectations for me, and she really had a point. I was a big problem at seventeen. If I had a kid like me, I would have those same expectations.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#77. I think that my films are basically family stories, beyond the fact that they are global and have political and social commentary.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#78. We need to see ourselves projected in other members of our species to, in turn, understand ourselves. Cinema, is that mirror. It is a bridge between the others and us.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#79. All my films have always been released in the autumn, maybe because they're more melancholy to people.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#80. We have these ambitions that are very hard to accomplish because life puts us in our place. We have this battle with mediocrity.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#81. I'm less interested in reality. I'm more interested in perception, the truth of the universe that we see.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#84. The problem with the screenplay is that it's not literature, and it's not a film. It's a very weird, technical kind of blueprint that will be absolutely transformed into something else that is not that, you know? Honestly, a screenplay is no literature.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#85. In hotels, every time I make a reservation and they never find my name, they never can pronounce it; it's so long, and sometimes they confuse.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#87. When I was sixteen, I was an absolutely romantic guy. I fell in love every week. I mean, I was in love with everybody, but unfortunately, nobody was in love with me.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#89. I respect BMW for not interfering in these projects. They're just trying to support short films with their brand, which I think is great.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#91. I think the most experimental way to a film is to tell the story the traditional way, because everyone is doing the other thing.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#93. To shoot a conventional film means that you are always covering yourself. You are putting nets and, in a way, letting bad decisions take over.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#95. When I think about growing up, I feel most affected by two travels that I made working in cargo boats when I was 16 and 18. One of them crossed through the Mississippi and Baton Rouge and Mobile, Alabama, and another went all the way to Europe.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#96. You can better embrace life, you can enjoy it more, when you are conscious that it will end. You bite life.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#97. I'm overwhelmed by the pain in the world; I'm affected by the news very much, and adding that to my work was becoming a little bit too much.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#98. Millions of Mexicans leave their kids in order to take care of other kids. That's a very painful thing.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#100. At a very young age, I was influenced enormously by Julio Cortazar or Carlos Fuentes. In that literature, there's always an exploration of different perspectives, points of view.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
