Terry Zwigoff Quotes

#1. I try to make a film that's very entertaining, very funny, but also gives you something to think about. And the strongest thing I have to offer is my point of view, to get across how I see the world in hopes that it can change the way other people see the world, hopefully for the better.

Terry Zwigoff

#2. I did turn down 'The Virgin Suicides.' I talked to the producers about it, and I just honestly told them that I didn't get it. Is it supposed to be funny, is it a thriller, what is it?

Terry Zwigoff

#3. Saying that all documentaries are the same is like saying all foreign films are the same.

Terry Zwigoff

#4. Whereas my producer literally worked on this thing for 10 years and because I gave that presenter credit to David Lynch, she to this day never gets credit. It really kills me.

Terry Zwigoff

#5. Luckily, he was in the process of moving to France at the time, anyway. But if he had stayed in the States, I don't know how he would have handled that, because it was getting pretty crazy. I mean, a celebrity which he really did not welcome. And I can't blame him.

Terry Zwigoff

#6. And I sense it was a rather constructed, almost half narrative fiction film in some ways. A lot of it was staged and manipulated to get those things in there that I knew to be strong.

Terry Zwigoff

#7. The main trouble with Hollywood is that the guys you have to pitch to, the guys who run the studios, are all business school grads.

Terry Zwigoff

#8. I never saw a department store Santa as a kid. My mother was afraid to take me.

Terry Zwigoff

#9. I was inspired to do anything I could to get out of what I was doing ... today, I'm motivated to pay the bills.

Terry Zwigoff

#10. Crumb was such an influence on me. He's such a visionary, such a great artist, that he so shaped my artistic sensibilities on a certain level that I do owe everything to him. The way I see the world is largely changed by him.

Terry Zwigoff

#11. For a long time, there was this rumor that I turned down doing 'Austin Powers,' which is not true. While they did send me the script, I don't think I was ever a serious consideration to direct it. I'm sure they probably sent it to 20 others as well.

Terry Zwigoff

#12. The things I want to make into a film, they're personal, esoteric things, and I don't expect anyone else to like them as much as I do. I generally like my films more than anybody else will.

Terry Zwigoff

#13. I think my father kept struggling to get us into better neighborhoods, better schools. One of the worst jobs he had was folding shirts under these fluorescent lights all day at the equivalent of a Kmart. I remember visiting him at work, thinking, 'When I grow up, I've got to do anything else.'

Terry Zwigoff

#14. If I start paying attention to the mechanics of a film while watching it, then it's generally a bad film.

Terry Zwigoff

#15. I gotta tell you, I don't have many close friends, and if I do wind up making friends with somebody, it takes me a long time, usually.

Terry Zwigoff

#16. You have to go back to the '30s and '40s to see a film that's any good.

Terry Zwigoff

#17. It makes it difficult to decide which to go see, since no film about say, some tragic genocide in Africa is going to get a bad review even if it's poorly made.

Terry Zwigoff

#18. I hope they get something of interest out of it, but I'd rather they all hate it and I like it, instead of vice versa ... I make films to please myself first, and if the audience likes them, all the better.

Terry Zwigoff

#19. Just to get the actors to relax, listen to each other, and actually affect each other, there are a number of techniques you have to learn, and they don't all work on every actor.

Terry Zwigoff

#20. A good script and perfect casting, that's 90 percent of the work.

Terry Zwigoff

#21. I think the other misconceptions when the film came out, he was very upset that it was so widely released and so widely seen. And neither one of us - well, I think I had hopes it would be, 'cause I really did think it was something special.

Terry Zwigoff

#22. The last Christmas movie I really liked was 'It's a Wonderful Life,' probably. It's sort of a schmaltzy movie, but it's not without its dark moments. It still gets to me every year.

Terry Zwigoff

#23. That would be getting up at 5 am ... I don't understand why film's shoot such brutal hours. I think it'd be worth it to not be so strictly cost-effective and have an 8 hour day. The film's would benefit in the end.

Terry Zwigoff

#24. People think I have an interest in comics, but I'm only interested in comics from the '40s, like 'Donald Duck' comics.

Terry Zwigoff

#25. The films I want to make, I really want to be passionate about.

Terry Zwigoff

#26. People like light and silly, and they like stuff that's really energetic, and you get a character in a film bouncing around and screaming, people laugh. That's all it takes. I don't find that funny. To me, what's funny is dialogue and nuance of character and performance.

Terry Zwigoff

#27. Because I found myself telling the story of his family to people without the visual aids that I was able to employ by filming them eventually. But I very much knew exactly what I was going to do.

Terry Zwigoff

#28. So I told Robert from the start that if we couldn't get Charles and Max to take part, but especially Charles, that I didn't want to make the film. So would he call his mother and talk to Charles and see if Charles would at all be interested.

Terry Zwigoff

#29. The Weinsteins believe in test screenings. I don't. I don't think good films are made that way. Call me crazy, but I'd like to think you need a singular vision to make good art.

Terry Zwigoff

#30. Certain types of films will never test well. My films never seem to test well.

Terry Zwigoff

#31. I collect old Coon Chicken Inn memorabilia. I collect black memorabilia, like old minstrel posters. It was a real place. There was one in Seattle, one in Portland, and one in Salt Lake City. They started in 1925, and then they went out of business around 1958.

Terry Zwigoff

#32. Chicago always hit me as such a gloomy place - I just remember all the snow getting dirty as soon as it would fall, all the decaying brown brick buildings around where we lived, all this soot all over the place.

Terry Zwigoff

#33. If I see my films described as 'quirky' or, even worse, 'snarky' one more time, I'm going to probably seriously consider an early retirement. All these years, I've labored under the conceit that they were darkly humorous.'

Terry Zwigoff

#34. Oh yes, I've been approached to do all sorts of nonsense. How about a remake of 'West Side Story?'

Terry Zwigoff

#35. Maybe if I found something I was really passionate about, which is entirely possible, I would make another documentary, but it's not a good career choice for anybody. I don't recommend it.

Terry Zwigoff

#36. There's no choice left in America anymore. Anything that's authentic and genuine, anything that grew out of any sense of tradition, is wiped out. We're left with this bland monoculture that's swept over the whole country.

Terry Zwigoff

#37. I don't like most Christmas movies. They're pretty bad, though they seem to make tons of money anyway. Like this movie 'Elf,' I got the script for that, and I turned it down right away. Against my wife's better judgment.

Terry Zwigoff

#38. Well, that was certainly - to me, until we could film in Charles' room, I didn't even want to bother filming anything else. And in fact, I did hold off and that was the first thing we filmed.

Terry Zwigoff