Quotes on Film

The wonderful thing about writing for theatre is you can go anywhere you want with the language. There are no limits. With film, they frown on language - it's always 'Too many words.'

It's important that a film is loud and I hope many people agree. You should be inside of a film when you go into a theater. It should surround you, envelope you, so you can live inside a dream.

The safest genre is the horror film. But the most unsafe - the most dangerous - is comedy. Because even if your horror film isn't very good, you'll get a few screams and you're okay. With a comedy, if they don't laugh, you're dead.

When I attack a role, be it TV, film or stage, the first thing I say is, I don't want to know anything. If it's good I don't want to hear it; if it's bad I don't want to hear it. The only thing either thing can do is distract me. I like to stay focused

We have to support our own films. If we don't, how can we expect others to support them?

To shoot a film is to organize an entire universe.

I'd like to do a number of films. Westerns. Genre pieces. Maybe another film about Italian Americans where they're not gangsters, just to prove that not all Italians are gangsters.

It takes stamina to get up like an athlete every single night, seven to eight performances a week, 20 weeks in a row. And there are many young performers who only learn their craft in the two minute bits it takes to film a scene. You never learn the arc of storytelling, the arc of a character that way.

No press conference announcing a last film. I'd just steal away. Best way because, if by chance after two or three years something interesting comes up, I would not - like Sinatra - have to say: 'Well, I've thought it over and decided to come back.'

There's only one thing that can kill the movies, and that's education.

The film is made in the editing room. The shooting of the film is about shopping, almost. It's like going to get all the ingredients together, and you've got to make sure before you leave the store that you got all the ingredients. And then you take those ingredients and you can make a good cake - or not.

The best reason to make a film is that you feel passionately about it.

I prefer to commit 100 per cent to a movie and make fewer films, because it takes over your life.

I must say here in France I had more serenity or security as I was working because I knew I was making the film the way I wished and that the film would be seen, ultimately, which is not always the case in Iran. In Iran, you always work having in mind this worry of will I be able to carry on my project as I wish and will the audience see the film.

I think it's insulting to an audience to make them sit and watch a film and then give them a message in one sentence.

I remember being on film sets when I was younger, and only men got to do the cool action movies. So I thought, 'Maybe I'll get to produce one day and get to do cool stuff too,' which is what happened when we did 'Charlie's Angels.' Starting my production company was a big turning point for me.

The best I can do is to make a film every two years.

There is something particularly unique about the films of Hong Sang-soo...it's got to do with his masterful sense of storytelling... as the critic Manny Farber once said of Hitchcock's ROPE Hong Sang-soo's pictures unpeel like an orange.

Film is truth 24 times a second, and every cut is a lie.

It's a very good time for horror. This business certainly has changed, but there's still room for serious horror films. Look at 28 Days Later, that's not a tongue-in-cheek picture.

I always feel that a viewer has an expectation about every moment of the film and where it's going, so if I act against that, I've created a twist. In fact, it becomes a kind of game with the expectations of the viewer. This is the superficial appearance. In the layer beneath, there is a hidden theme.