Allison Anders Quotes

#1. Nothing feels worse than knowing that people didn't see your movie. That they wanted to and the critics loved it but nobody knew where it was because it didn't do what it was supposed to do opening weekend. It used to be that independents were allowed to stay in the theaters, build word of mouth.

Allison Anders

#2. In 'Honeymoon in Vegas,' after Nicolas Cage tells his fiancee that he's given her away to pay for his gambling debts, she gets into a tizzy as if she were a 6-year-old. I couldn't believe it.

Allison Anders

#3. Music has always been a great solace for me. It's still something that gives me far more joy than movies, I must say. I love movies, too. But somehow, music can transport you. There are so many different kinds of experiences you can have with music.

Allison Anders

#4. When you're traumatized, you pick out one thing you remember more than anything else.

Allison Anders

#5. The women I cast have to embody all sorts of contradictions ... I have to find the right woman to speak to other women.

Allison Anders

#6. I was a single mom.

Allison Anders

#7. You end up giving up half your salary every time you make a movie because you need the money to make the movie you have in your head.

Allison Anders

#8. I'd be just as happy being a midwife. That's my ideal job.

Allison Anders

#9. I love showing off my tattoos.

Allison Anders

#10. When I wanted to become a filmmaker, there was nobody for me to look up to.

Allison Anders

#11. Movies can tell us about our place, or lack of place, in our culture.

Allison Anders

#12. You still get the movies made. A filmmaker can always scrape up money to do a movie. The passion drives it. And you'll get the money. Money's the easiest thing. But the hardest thing is finding a way for people to see your movie.

Allison Anders

#13. Trauma creates one of four types of people: victims, rescuers, or perps - and if you're really lucky and really strong and very willing and brave, survivors.

Allison Anders

#14. When 'Gas Food Lodging' was released, I had already shot 'Mi Vida Loca.'

Allison Anders

#15. I've been amazed watching people who are not ready with their scripts when they're getting a lot of attention.

Allison Anders

#16. While we can work hard at improving our health, size is no more in our control than the color of our skin, our ethnicity, or our sexual preference.

Allison Anders

#17. I was a big fan of X. I've probably seen 100 X shows during their time in the late '70s and early '80s.

Allison Anders

#18. Because I came from the working class, I still identify with them. I don't identify with the middle class.

Allison Anders

#19. I don't believe you ever get closure on anything. Things leave a permanent mark on you.

Allison Anders

#20. During the '90s, a lot of us in the indie film world were not making our money off our movies. We were screenwriters doing scripts for hire for studios.

Allison Anders

#21. It was such a struggle for me to make it off welfare. I was getting $630 a month for myself and my children with no support from their fathers. The rent was $600 a month, and if you got a job, they took it out of your welfare.

Allison Anders

#22. I've worked on movies where there's all these people coming and going, and I don't even know who they are.

Allison Anders

#23. Nowadays you don't get to see composition in a movie because nobody ever keeps the camera still long enough to see it. Actors don't have the thrill and the power of working with space.

Allison Anders

#24. Do we have to be rail thin to possess 'outer beauty' and sex appeal and to be capable of attracting lovers?

Allison Anders

#25. Before, I just don't think we knew how much music was out there; now with MySpace, it's really opened it up. Filmmakers have so much more choice.

Allison Anders

#26. Let's face it - no matter how independent you are, you still have this nagging need to be desired.

Allison Anders

#27. Unless it's something very clever like 'Memento,' most independent films have a very tough life out there.

Allison Anders

#28. I had always felt deep down that I owned the characters. Much as I adored and cherished the work of my actors, I felt that they were cast to do and be what I could not physically do or be.

Allison Anders

#29. Sundance is the only hand that feeds for women directors.

Allison Anders

#30. I think that with the success of, like, VH1's 'Behind The Music' and stuff like that, the fact that it's so successful, it's clear that people are interested in rock lives.

Allison Anders

#31. There's never been a 'girl wonder' mythology.

Allison Anders

#32. Box office is one of the strongest tools we have toward preserving our ability to make our movies. We really can make a difference by purchasing a ticket each opening weekend to a movie made by a woman, even if you don't like the movie or the filmmaker and even if you don't see the film.

Allison Anders

#33. Roman Polanski is one of my favorite filmmakers, and John Phillips one of my favorite songwriters. I had the honor to meet each of these men and was almost giddy to be blessed with the chance to tell each artist what his work meant has to me.

Allison Anders

#34. There's a persona that musicians carry with them. I like to find what's under the persona.

Allison Anders

#35. For me, the most exciting thing is that Jane Campion is a woman we can all really look up to. She doesn't have the body of work that some other directors do - no woman director does - but her work is so consistently original, wonderful, masterful.

Allison Anders

#36. In the early '90s when the American independent movie started, it held personal vision as a premium. That was brilliant timing.

Allison Anders

#37. This practice of skinny actresses donning fat suits is essentially the new and acceptable blackface in Hollywood.

Allison Anders

#38. The first thing I did for TV was a pilot for CBS.

Allison Anders

#39. My work is better, maybe all filmmakers are better, for Polanski's imprint on cinema. He created language for all of us to use, there is no question about that.

Allison Anders

#40. Art should never be held above our decency to each other.

Allison Anders

#41. Maybe women sometimes wish that a man would come along and buy them.

Allison Anders

#42. Because I'm one of five people in Los Angeles who doesn't drive, I walk a lot.

Allison Anders