Top 100 Quotes About Filmmakers
#1. I think that all the talented filmmakers sort of share, I think, a sense of allowing magic to happen; of creating a stable and secure environment for performers to feel they can push to the end of their ability.
Chiwetel Ejiofor
#2. The filmmakers have a story they want to tell, and they go get the material they need for it. The film either exceeds or fails to meet up to their expectations or it's different.
Joshua Oppenheimer
#3. I am blessed to live and work in [France,] a country where women filmmakers are by and large not unfairly treated. So I wouldn't have much to contribute regarding issues faced as a female director.
Anne Fontaine
#4. 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.
Paul Bettany
#5. Audiences crave something they've never seen before. That's what they want. They want to be dazzled. They want to go in either to have their expectations blown out of the water, or have no expectations and are dazzled by the decisions that we [filmmakers] made.
Tom Hanks
#6. I look at some of my work and say, "Oh, that's where I can be better." I want to continue to grow and do things that do scare me. I want to work with filmmakers who will help me go deeper in my work.
Hilary Swank
#7. America is a magical place, and I think my job, or the job of a lot of us European filmmakers is to just hold up America to Americans and present it to you in a new way. All I wanted to do is in a funny way say, "Look at your country. It's magnificent."
Hans Zimmer
#8. If you aim for parody right off the bat and it misses, no offense to the filmmakers, but it is Meet the Spartans.
Adam McKay
#9. Filmmakers, they tell me they want to make movies. I say, 'Good, go out, buy a $500 camera, get some friends and make a movie. Don't go to Hollywood. Stay wherever you are.'
Alan Arkin
#10. I really want to be the black Tina Fey, where I just am able to produce my own content and produce other content for other minority filmmakers and put their voices on screen and basically be able to have free range to produce.
Issa Rae
#11. Throughout Ireland, there's a brilliant community of filmmakers and actors, and I guess there was always a lure to do some work in the place where I come from.
Jamie Dornan
#12. 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.
Haile Gerima
#14. Filmmakers are anxious about what other people are working on.
Kevin Feige
#15. It's nice being friends over a period of time with people whose music you like so much, or other filmmakers, seeing people change, go through trials.
Noah Baumbach
#16. Sarah Michelle Gellar's made some really good choices. She's had some bad breaks. She goes with the independent, interesting young filmmakers and then they get slammed, like 'Southland Tales.' I'm proud of what she's trying to do. It's hard.
Joss Whedon
#17. A lot of filmmakers from my generation were lucky enough to have their work more or less perpetuated by people who saw them originally on TV and on HBO and certainly on home video.
Joe Dante
#18. I would like to hook up with one of the great Japanese filmmakers, like the master that made 'Ringu,' and I would like to take 'The Wicker Man' to Japan, except this time he's a ghost.
Nicolas Cage
#19. Filmmakers have to commit to making 3-D films properly like Jim Cameron did and not do cheap conversions at the tail end of the process.
Peter Jackson
#20. I am filled with awe that filmmakers have the capacity to stir us and give us back a sense of wonder.
Theodore Bikel
#21. Other filmmakers make their movies and put them out and that's that. For me, for some odd reason, it goes deeper than that.
Kevin Smith
#22. I love Pixar films; I think they're the greatest filmmakers in the world. I love Disney films. 'Tangled,' was great. I loved 'How to Train Your Dragon,' the Dreamworks film. But it's not for me. I don't want to make a film for families; I want to make adult films.
Bill Plympton
#23. 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.
Aurora Guerrero
#24. Careers are built on relationships. Even if it's a bad movie, even if I know it's a bad movie, even if it's a team of filmmakers that I know are going to be difficult, that I know are going to really make me work extra hard, it's fundamentally the same process.
Christophe Beck
#25. Look at the people who are coming to television Ridley Scott, Ang Lee or Guillermo del Toro - all these great filmmakers - actively put themselves back into TV. That's because the environment is very encouraging for bold storytelling, storytelling that you've never seen before.
Ron Perlman
#26. I think for female filmmakers a big issue is making their second and third films.
Ava DuVernay
#27. Showtime has given new, young filmmakers - black, white, across the board - an opportunity to make films, as well as actors who want to cross over into directing.
Morris Chestnut
#28. The economy is rough. I think that affects everyone from big filmmakers to tiny filmmakers.
Greta Gerwig
#29. I will say that comic books are not the easiest things to translate to film, number one. Even the most well meaning of filmmakers find what's acceptable on the printed page is very difficult to bring to film.
Mark Hamill
#30. I think it's a mistake for young filmmakers to just buy digital equipment and shoot a feature. Make short films first, make your mistakes and learn from them.
Jason Reitman
#31. 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
#32. If the goal is to get the best artists, actors, and filmmakers in the world to create the best movies, Hollywood does a decent job. And I think no one would disagree with me that it also makes a ton of bad movies and employs a bunch of hacks.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt
#33. The only advice I can really give to the young filmmakers is to be persistent, don't give up, and keep watching and making as many movies as you possibly can.
Rian Johnson
#34. The system is not really particularly amenable to filmmakers who write and direct their own work. It's much more about the studio already having a property that has a marketable concept and then hiring the director on board.
James Gray
#35. It is an honor for me to take part in Canon's Project Imagin8ion, partnering with a brand that is empowering young filmmakers and is at the forefront of technology.
Bryce Dallas Howard
#36. There's more emphasis on art and culture in Europe than there is in the United States and I think that a lot of American directors and writers are just trying to copy other American horror films, they don't pick up much in the way that European filmmakers do.
Wes Craven
#37. There's a tremendous intellectual fervor among independent filmmakers, and that has to be cultivated.
Dan Glickman
#38. Perhaps it sounds ridiculous, but the best thing that young filmmakers should do is to get hold of a camera and some film and make a movie of any kind at all.
Stanley Kubrick
#39. Some of the mini-worlds that filmmakers have created are so ingrained in my love of culture.
Drew Barrymore
#40. It's so tough to get movies made in Ireland anymore. A whole generation of Irish filmmakers doesn't have the resources to get a movie made.
Ciaran Hinds
#41. The world has obviously changed in terms of the way filmmakers and actors and writers often look at their own careers. They all seem to want to include in their own process - along with some of their iconic and franchise-driven movies.
Mark Canton
#42. I hope to continue my friendship with France and its filmmakers for many years to come.
Harvey Weinstein
#43. I love working with young people and young filmmakers, and I love working on first films. I think it's cool. It's fun. I just take it as it comes.
Sigourney Weaver
#45. When that happens - when risk is taken and the filmmakers dive into the subject matter without a parachute - very often what you get it something with those qualities that make it age well with the public.
Francis Ford Coppola
#46. It's a funny thing because you look at the careers of other filmmakers, and you see them sort of slow down, and you realize, maybe this becomes harder to do as you get older. That's sort of a cautionary thing. I hope it doesn't happen to me.
Joel Coen
#47. As intelligent and responsible filmmakers, working in a free society, we have a duty to ensure that our chosen medium is a force for good. Especially in this ever-more complex and difficult world.
David Puttnam
#48. 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
#49. What I would say to filmmakers, if I may be so bold or so arrogant, is to draw inspiration from other filmmakers, but go to the place in your own gut where everything is nothing. That's a very Zen thing to say, but that place of nothing is where real creativity comes out of.
Lawrence Bender
#50. I think what we're trying to do as filmmakers is make a big, gritty, raw, epic movie and within that show things graphically in a way that they haven't been seen in that world before.
Rupert Sanders
#51. I hear filmmakers saying, 'I wanted to make to make a film about this issue, or this theme,' but I never start like that.
Andrea Arnold
#52. I feel like the great filmmakers who have a true voice, yeah they take the notes, they understand the notes, but it's really about the notes underneath the notes. When you do a test screening and somebody says, 'Well, I didn't like the love story,' but it was probably just too long.
Louis Leterrier
#53. I'm very fortunate to have the privilege of working with directors like Bill Condon and Paul Thomas Anderson, who I think is one of the greatest filmmakers of our time.
Rami Malek
#54. As far as the balance between being a journalist, being an artist, being a storyteller - documentary filmmakers are all three of those things. The balance between them is affected by the film itself, the topic of the film.
Marshall Curry
#55. I always had this huge respect for American filmmakers and American actors. I always had this very strong love and respect for the American cinema. I always knew that I was going to leave Sweden.
Noomi Rapace
#56. I think that the whole voyeuristic attitude of filmmakers or of me personally - of shooting documentaries and so forth - is an important issue.
Haskell Wexler
#57. If filmmakers are ignorant of the past, they laborto re-invent the wheel in every picture. You sit and think, 'Well,we're back to 1903 here.'
Peter Bogdanovich
#58. 'Ageism,' or whatever you want to call it, is a very English phenomenon. You don't get it too much in many other cultures. And no one says it about authors or poets or filmmakers. 'Oh, they're too old to make films or write books.'
Paul Weller
#59. The problem for independent filmmakers is that huge companies control all the promotion, all the advertising. Hollywood films' advertising budgets are as large as their shooting budgets.
Robert Kane Pappas
#60. 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.
Simon Pegg
#61. For young filmmakers, Saw is a perfect film. It doesn't cost the GNP of almost every country of the world.
Donnie Wahlberg
#62. Literally, the piece at the end is where the universe is cracked apart, it's a big moment. Basically, they, the filmmakers, have directed the story earlier in the book. It happens, it's called adapting a book, you have to make decisions about things. It's not unusual having to cut out scenes.
Daniel Craig
#63. Most filmmakers' entire body of knowledge is of other movies. When they describe things, they describe them in relation to other movies. That's why we have so many cyclical movies that look like other movies. But I'm not cynical. I even go to some of those movies.
John Malkovich
#64. 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
#65. We're surrounded by violence, and we see so much of it on TV, especially the news programs. We almost become numb. And that forces filmmakers to try to outdo themselves ... They say, 'Look what I can do,' and it becomes like a showoff thing. To me, that's ridiculous. Filmmaking isn't a contest!
Jan De Bont
#66. I read certain articles about how all of the new filmmakers are immediately being given massive tentpoles, and there's a lot of original movies that we have now lost as a result of this. I don't want to call it a fad because I think it's a good thing. I think the movies are better as a result.
Colin Trevorrow
#67. Iranian filmmakers are not passive. They fight whenever they can, as creative expression means a lot to them. The restrictions and censorship in Iran are a bit like the British weather: one day it's sunny, the next day it's raining. You just have to hope you walk out into the sunshine.
Asghar Farhadi
#68. I definitely think for up and coming filmmakers, people graduating from film school, people that want to do their own movies, horror movies are a great way to go.
Jonathan Levine
#69. Well it kind of is project to project because as a writer I think you always write to some degree about things that you know or things that happened - but my favourite filmmakers, my favourite movies of theirs tend to be the personal movies.
Cameron Crowe
#70. There are a lot of filmmakers I love whose work doesn't inspire mine at all. For example: Quentin Tarantino. From his films you can see that he has a wicked sense of humour, and I love that!
Chika Anadu
#71. I think it's our obligation as filmmakers, as people investigating the world, to create the reality that is most insightful to the issues at hand. Here are human beings, like us, boasting about atrocities that should be unimaginable.
Joshua Oppenheimer
#72. Filmmakers and artists always thrive during more liberal times.
Michael Moore
#73. I thing for female filmmakers a big issue is making their second and third films. You see the statistics, and the dropoff on the second and third [films] , are dire.
Ava DuVernay
#74. If you go back all the way to the 1920s, filmmakers in Hollywood changed the identity of villains from German to Russian.
Evan Osnos
#75. I love indie movies. I think that independent cinema is where it's at and where a lot of trends begin. It's where new filmmakers are breaking through.
Zooey Deschanel
#76. The reason most comedies don't win awards is that the filmmakers put the comedy first. This means you have to create a story around the jokes.
Paul Feig
#77. Outcasts may grow up to be novelists and filmmakers and computer tycoons, but they will never be the athletic ruling class.
Chuck Klosterman
#78. People used to want to be filmmakers and animators; now they want to make apps.
Bill Plympton
#79. As an artist, I like working with filmmakers that have the balls to kind of imagine the unimaginable. Those are kind of the radicals that I identify with.
Zoe Saldana
#80. I certainly don't believe you documentary filmmakers. Like me, you are involved in making fiction, and your fiction is just as well organized and just as well predicated, but the big difference between me and you is that I'm honest and you're dishonest. I know I'm telling you lies.
Peter Greenaway
#81. Martin Scorsese is one of the great filmmakers of all time.
Rob Reiner
#82. Australians just don't see that many Australian films, but it's also our responsibility as filmmakers and the responsibility of the funding bodies to remember that audiences want to be entertained, and people are entertained in lots of different ways.
Georgina Haig
#83. I have a new respect for filmmakers, that's for sure, 'cause it's not easy. If I'm allowed to, I'll be directing for the rest of my life. I love the process.
Denzel Washington
#84. Post-war filmmakers gave us the documentary, Rob Reiner gave us the mockumentary and Moore initiated a third genre, the crockumentary.
Michael Moore
#85. Filmmakers are always in a bubble; along with our crew or writer, we don't really get to socialize with other filmmakers, so the great thing about Sundance is you can see many other filmmakers doing the same thing you do.
George Tillman Jr.
#86. Just in the past few years - since I've been making movies, which isn't a very long time - you now have a culture that is fascinated and informed about the box office in a way that sometimes filmmakers weren't even.
Neil LaBute
#87. Working with David Cronenberg or Darren Aronofsky or even Steven Soderbergh isn't really like a typical Hollywood movie. These are true artists, and have a certain amount of freedom when they work, and they're more like independent filmmakers making their way through big studios.
Vincent Cassel
#88. I find a lot of young filmmakers make too much of an effort to be trendy and they can be pretentious.
Sadie Frost
#89. I like the days when all the filmmakers had was a film roll, a camera and a gangster. The Mack Sennett comedies were all like that. They'd create little teams to go out and shoot films.
Michel Gondry
#90. I don't find myself lobbying for projects. Filmmakers almost always come to me.
Carter Burwell
#91. I think filmmakers, in general ... There are some awesome, really great filmmakers - but on the whole, filmmakers, actors, I think they are the biggest bunch of whiny, over-paid babies on the planet.
Eli Roth
#92. A big mistake a lot of filmmakers do is they like, "We cut our whole ending to a Rolling Stones song." You better find a new ending then, because unless you have $2 million for that song.
Rob Zombie
#93. When I was in Hungary in December I was looking at student films and I could not tell which ones were shot on film and which ones were shot digitally. I think that is because the filmmakers in Europe go to four years of film school and learn the techniques.
Vilmos Zsigmond
#94. You can't work in the movies. Movies are all about lighting. Very few filmmakers will concentrate on the story. You get very little rehearsal time, so anything you do onscreen is a kind of speed painting.
John Malkovich
#95. We are filmmakers, and we are specifically trying to entertain people.
Mads Mikkelsen
#96. 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.
Fredrik Bond
#97. I am admiring of my fellow peers, black filmmakers and black actors and actresses.
Cuba Gooding Jr.
#98. If there's anything that I've always said about myself is that to me, it's much more important for me to get to work with filmmakers that I've grown up loving and admiring.
Zoe Saldana
#99. I've always felt really lucky to get to work with really great filmmakers. For me, the whole objective is just to hopefully be of service to what they want.
Bryce Dallas Howard
#100. I only want to work with interesting filmmakers.
Douglas Booth
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