Top 100 Filmmaker Quotes
#1. Television happens very quickly. It was like a shot of adrenaline into me, as a filmmaker, and my career. You can hit town, do the show, and leave with this incredible energy behind you.
Michael J. Bassett
#2. When people see the conventions, they think they're going to get the straightforward genre - I don't give them that and they get mad. People see that and they think I don't understand the conventions because I'm not a good filmmaker.
Mary Harron
#3. My father was an amateur filmmaker who shot 8mm color documentaries.
Lasse Hallstrom
#4. When a filmmaker does not make films, it is as if he is jailed. Even when he is freed from the small jail, he finds himself wandering in a larger jail. The main question is: why should it be a crime to make a movie? A finished film, well, it can get banned but not the director.
Jafar Panahi
#5. I've never achieved spectacular success with a film. My reputation has grown slowly. I suppose you could say that I'm a successful filmmaker-in that a number of people speak well of me. But none of my films have received unanimously positive reviews, and none have done blockbuster business.
Stanley Kubrick
#6. For me, the best part is people who watch the movie and tell me it inspired them to collaborate with their friend who's a photographer or filmmaker.
Feist
#7. As a filmmaker, it's not my intent to trigger or shape national discourse. My task is to make as powerful and understandable a film as I can. What happens next is what happens next.
Peter Landesman
#8. I'VE NOTICED, FROM MY EXPERIENCE, IF THE EXTERNAL, EMOTIONAL CONSTRUCTION OF IMAGES IN A FILM ARE BASED ON THE FILMMAKER'S OWN MEMORY, ON THE KINSHIP OF ONE'S PERSONAL EXPERIENCE WITH THE FABRIC OF THE FILM, THEN THE FILM WILL HAVE THE POWER TO AFFECT THOSE WHO SEE IT.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#9. I am always striving to be the best that I can be as a filmmaker.
Brad Furman
#10. If you're a writer, write. You just keep writing. And if you're a filmmaker, you keep doing what you can to keep telling your stories; you don't stay on the one. Keep moving forward and doing what you can to tell whatever story you can tell, be it via writing, be it via filming it.
Dana Brunetti
#11. The interesting thing is that when you start out, people have no judgment and they see you young and fresh as a filmmaker - and because you have no experience yet, you're much more naive and think anything is possible.
Marc Forster
#12. Film making is an expensive, as well as a serious business. We should be able to entertain our audiences, who are fully aware of what they want. Every filmmaker has a different point of view and presents facets of society.
Rohit Shetty
#13. I knew that I always wanted to be a filmmaker, an actor, a writer and a director, that was always my plan.
Jaime King
#14. I'm proud of the way I rearrange and put things together, like a chef who makes a great meal, or a filmmaker who puts together a story - it's casting, editing, cinematography.
Bonnie Raitt
#15. As a filmmaker, I want to be known as a pan-African filmmaker and this is because I think that we have more to gain as Africans than as individual countries.
Juliet Asante
#16. Filmmakers are anxious about what other people are working on.
Kevin Feige
#17. I became a filmmaker because I wanted to deal with issues that intrigued me, that I thought were pertinent, that would start dialogue.
Justin Lin
#18. The worst thing for a filmmaker is for a film to be labeled as pretentious or heavy-handed.
John Curran
#19. As a filmmaker, you want nothing more than to have people say, 'I love your movie.'
Peter Jackson
#20. I want to be able to go wherever I want to go, do whatever I want to do. I guard the material and the filmmaker.
Scott Rudin
#21. I think I'm still trying to find my voice as a filmmaker and finding stories to tell.
Katie Aselton
#22. When I'm introduced as a two-time Oscar winner, I'm happy that a film of mine has found an audience and some acclaim because that keeps me in business. A filmmaker's greatest concern is the ability to make future films, so it helps keep me in business.
Alexander Payne
#23. I'm a man who struggles with melancholy and depression, but I am a very productive filmmaker and I work constantly, with no pause. Even in the worst of crises, I manage to produce work. And that's keeping me alive.
Jorgen Leth
#24. I learn so much from watching films like that with commentary and then when you get to hear another filmmaker talk about their films it's a really great experience.
Jay Roach
#25. I think as a filmmaker my first contribution would just be to make a good movie that people would love to see and leave the theatre charged, with a sense of excitement.
Michael Moore
#26. I was very committed to the process of composing, working at poems, putting things together and taking them apart like some kind of experimental filmmaker.
David Antin
#27. I saw 'A Clockwork Orange' when I was 11. When you watch 'Clockwork Orange' at 11, it either totally scares you from watching movies, or you want to become a filmmaker. I was the latter.
Bill Hader
#28. If you're a great documentary filmmaker, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're a great narrative filmmaker. There are fantastic documentary filmmakers that can't direct actors. You don't have to do that in a documentary, if it's a real documentary.
Alexander Skarsgard
#29. I don't want to become an ivory tower filmmaker. That sounds peculiar, but I want to be a mainstream filmmaker. I want the largest possible audience that I can find - but, of course, on my terms.
Peter Greenaway
#30. I want to do my own thing, and I'm trying to get closer to realizing that as a filmmaker.
Charlie Kaufman
#31. I'm pretty committed to being a filmmaker because it incorporates everything I love: music, art direction, story, and you know - everything.
Adria Petty
#32. Well, if you ask any filmmaker how they got into it, everyone came a different route. Ive never actually watched another director work.
Alan Parker
#33. TV [series] is a six-year decision. It's not four or five weeks. If a filmmaker and I don't get along, it's four weeks of your life, so whatever.
Marc Blucas
#34. You must live life in its very elementary forms. The Mexicans have a very nice word for it: pura vida. It doesn't mean just purity of life, but the raw, stark-naked quality of life. And that's what makes young people more into a filmmaker than academia.
Werner Herzog
#35. I think 99% of the whole thing is to have passion about the idea yourself. I think part of your job as a filmmaker is to tell someone that might not think it's going to work that, actually, it will work.
Alice Lowe
#36. My experience of test screenings is that you don't know what kind of mood people are going to be in, and sometimes the studios accept what Joe Blo says - and this guy could just be a frustrated filmmaker, or not paying attention.
Antoine Fuqua
#37. I chose to tell a personal story. When you tell a movie like this that's as emotionally charged as this is, it's a risk. As one of my great cinematic heroes, Francis Coppola, would say, "If you aren't taking the highest, greatest risk, then why are you a filmmaker?"
Christian Bale
#38. You begin to understand, as a filmmaker, that there are different ways of approaching things. Everything doesn't have to be quick cut, like MTV.
Peter Webber
#39. I've been a documentary photographer for much longer than I have been a filmmaker.
Lauren Greenfield
#40. When I was 20 years old, I had no plans to ever be a filmmaker.
Spike Jonze
#42. Writing has certain advantages; film is another way to tell a story. An experienced filmmaker will take what she needs from the book and leave out other things. With adaptations, you never get the texture of the writing: it's a different mode.
Jhumpa Lahiri
#43. If I had a big brother who was a year older than me or something, I probably wouldn't have ended up being a filmmaker.
M. Night Shyamalan
#44. Some of the mini-worlds that filmmakers have created are so ingrained in my love of culture.
Drew Barrymore
#45. I think this is an exciting time to be a female filmmaker. Trust your instincts, work harder than anyone else and learn your craft. Know it all. This means learn how to shoot, edit, produce and direct. Get as much experience as you can and watch a lot of films.
Alex Hammond
#46. There's no such thing as "an auteurist filmmaker." Every film directors is an auteur. We only make films that we do because we cannot put on clothes that don't fit us.
Lee Yoon-ki
#47. I live in New York City, the stories of my films take place in New York; I'm a New York filmmaker.
Spike Lee
#48. When you're casting a movie and when you're shooting a film, the eyes are the most important feature of any performer, really. Any great actor literally knows exactly how to use their eyes, and even as a filmmaker I love shooting huge close-ups because it's those eyes that mean so much to me.
Peter Jackson
#49. I'd meet a new filmmaker that I'd always loved, and I'd think, "Great! I'm in the right place." It's a weird way to look at it, but I don't care as long as I'm able to make stuff that I want to make.
Amy Seimetz
#50. There was a time when emigration from Cuba was a definitive separation. There were no visits. In the '80s, '90s, it was incredibly difficult. I'm not the only one interested in this as a filmmaker - other Cuban filmmakers have dealt with it, too, because it's such a part of our reality.
Fernando Perez
#51. I suppose once in a while, a filmmaker makes a movie that's more than just a sum of its parts, more than good acting or good filmmaking. It's something else that has nothing to do with what you've done. This is in 1999, made by people in 1999 for people in 1999 about people in 1999.
Sam Mendes
#52. In movies, there are some things the French do that Americans are increasingly incapable of doing. One is honoring the complexities of youth. It's a quiet, difficult undertaking, requiring subtlety in a filmmaker and perception and patience from us.
Wesley Morris
#53. I'm a theater guy and a filmmaker. So when my community was thrown up in the air by the gas industry, the way I could contribute was to do something in the film world. I never thought it would be a big deal at all.
Josh Fox
#54. The worst thing you can do to a filmmaker is to walk out of his film and go, 'That was a nice movie.' But if you can cause people to walk out and then argue about the film on the sidewalk ... I think we're all seeking dissension, and we love to affect an audience.
Paul Haggis
#55. I'd love to just think of myself as a filmmaker, and I wait for the day when the modifier can be a moot point.
Kathryn Bigelow
#56. As a filmmaker, I make the films that I love, that are in my heart. That's what I care about.
Jose Padilha
#57. Susanne Bier's work I've always really enjoyed. She's just such a great filmmaker; she's very cool and very sexy - that always helps, too.
Pierce Brosnan
#58. I think of myself more as a filmmaker or as a film person than as strictly just a writer. I don't come out of playwriting or anything like that.
Peter Gould
#59. We probably do not have a large enough industry here to ably support the independent filmmaker to move in and out. Much of the industry is based on full-time jobs here, institutionalised jobs.
Ann Macbeth
#60. Cinema is an art form that is designed to go across borders. And as a filmmaker, the only way I can direct a movie is when I feel close to my culture.
Denis Villeneuve
#61. The world wants to define me by my mammary glands and melanin. It is just fascinating that Michael Mann has never been asked what it is like to be a white male filmmaker.
Victoria Mahoney
#62. I am very filmmaker oriented, as a producer. I think the most important thing is that you have to really choose the players carefully.
Nina Jacobson
#63. Even reading my first bad review was an awesome experience. It was cool because you make something and not everybody's going to like it. I felt like that kind of grew me up a little bit into a professional. I was a student filmmaker, and no one writes reviews about student films.
Ryan Coogler
#64. F For Fake is a talentless concoction of unparalleled ineptitude ... It would have been a more generous gesture to show a retrospective of old Welles films rather than remind everyone of how low his ability as a filmmaker has plummeted.
Rex Reed
#65. I'm not a career filmmaker. I just like to do things that I still kind of believe in and because of that you just never know what's going to happen next. It doesn't matter if it's been a good year or a bad year: next year, there's no telling what it will be like.
Peter Mullan
#66. I live in Tuxedo Park, N.Y. and spend time in the West Village, where my wife Elizabeth Cotnoir, a writer-producer and documentary filmmaker, has an office.
Howard Shore
#67. To make a real independent film where the filmmaker is in charge creatively, one must sacrifice personal, financial, and physical well-being.
Mark Polish
#68. This is what I always tell my filmmakers-you have to do tons of research, because you don't know where the inspiration is going come from.
John Lasseter
#69. I don't consider myself a sociologist, I consider myself a filmmaker, among other things. Maybe an asshole but a filmmaker.
Melvin Van Peebles
#70. I'm the only Mauritanian filmmaker so it wouldn't make sense to make a film in France. I could shoot outside of my own country if the story was something that called for it. Africa really has to be the reason for me to make a new film.
Abderrahmane Sissako
#71. Any filmmaker would want to make something that can still be seen without someone saying, "Ugh that was repulsing, offensive, don't bother visiting it 2nd time."
Timo Tjahjanto
#72. I had played sports all my life, and I thought that was going to be the way. But I saw where the potential in football was going to end. When it comes to decision-making, I just follow my gut at the end of the day. And if I don't, I get in trouble. I wanted to become a filmmaker.
Jason Wiles
#73. My style of songwriting is influenced by cinema. I'm a frustrated filmmaker. A fan once said to me, 'Girl, you make me see pictures in my head!' and I took that as a great compliment. That's exactly my intention.
Joni Mitchell
#74. I always wanted to be a filmmaker and became one through sheer single-mindedness. I came to filmmaking from a background in graphic design. I went to film school at Newcastle Polytechnic.
Neil Marshall
#75. I mean, frankly, I'm not speaking as a representative of Disney or Pixar, I'm speaking as just myself as a filmmaker: I don't go into anything that often thinking about a sequel.
Andrew Stanton
#77. You have to be able to feel like you can play way outside of the box. If you're with a great filmmaker and someone you can trust, that's encouraged, and Seth was that kind of filmmaker and co-star.
Charlize Theron
#78. I'm not a genre film filmmaker. I'd rather look for a topic that I think we need to bring up and discuss because there's something about the issues in the film.
Ruben Ostlund
#79. I don't want to be an old-man filmmaker, making old-man movies, and I don't want to be the one not to know when to leave the party.
Quentin Tarantino
#80. I never intended to be a documentary filmmaker. I think I became a documentary filmmaker because I had trouble writing, and I had trouble finishing things.
Errol Morris
#81. Every good writer or filmmaker has something eating at them, right? That they can't quite get off their back . And so your job is to make your audience care about your obsessions.
Bruce Springsteen
#82. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise - not our political opponents, and certainly not a disingenuous filmmaker, who would have us believe.
John McCain
#83. You can tell how good a filmmaker is if you can turn the sound down but you can still feel the story.
Q-Tip
#84. If a filmmaker and I don't get along, it's four weeks of your life, so, whatever. With TV, it's six years.
Marc Blucas
#85. I think one of the privileges of being a filmmaker is the opportunity to remain a kind of perpetual student.
Edward Zwick
#86. It's interesting for myself, growing up as an Asian-American filmmaker. Coming into the industry, my parents always said, "No one's going to give you the opportunity. You just have to do the work. Be better than everyone else, so they can't deny it."
Daniel Radcliffe
#87. There are consequences with age, so you have to evolve. I've loved becoming a filmmaker. But I would love to continue modeling, and there isn't really any job for me. It's being marginalized - that's the sad part.
Isabella Rossellini
#88. One of the things you do as a writer and as a filmmaker is grasp for resonant symbols and imagery without necessarily fully understanding it yourself.
Christopher Nolan
#90. 'Sunshine' is really an experiment for me to see if I am a filmmaker beyond having my own stories to tell.
Dexter Fletcher
#91. A lot of those old ideas are dying with the people who created them, and there's this new generation of filmmaker that's saying, "We're in this together, these are issues that we all deal with, let's just present issues to screen without bias and figure out what the audience has to say about them."
Nate Parker
#92. As a filmmaker, you complete a film you have spent years obsessively making, and you know the release prints will never look quite the same; prints get scratched and dirty.
Asif Kapadia
#93. Everyone has their truth. Mine lies in the cinema.
Dawn Garcia
#94. A movie is just like a work of art or a book or a piece of music. The intent of its maker is one thing, but its interpretation by an audience is something else. I don't stop at what the filmmaker wanted to do.
Wesley Morris
#95. I'm a journalist, and I'm a filmmaker. I have an organization that's all about telling stories.
Jose Antonio Vargas
#96. I know every film is different. Every filmmaker is different and works differently.
Rachel Maddow
#97. My interest in painting is recording things. I think of myself as almost a documentary filmmaker ... I've gotten into some curious situations ...
Jamie Wyeth
#98. I keep pushing buttons and trying to grow as a person and as a filmmaker.
Famke Janssen
#99. I consider myself a completely lucky filmmaker. I've had nothing but good luck. Everything I've needed has come my way.
Woody Allen
#100. I don't think that anybody really makes films quite like mine. That's maybe true of any filmmaker.
Errol Morris
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