Quotes on Film

I really have created a family. I work with the people I love, I travel with them, I make films with them, and I'm in an office with them. So in a weird way - I know I haven't birthed a child - I feel that I'm a part of creating a family. It's a tribe. I love that word.

I want to be able to follow the example of those extraordinary British actresses who move effortlessly from film to TV to theatre roles.

The audience too should be respected by being presented with a film as they remember it, and for those who have not seen it, as it was intended to be seen. Anything less is a degradation of the film and its audience.

I was saying as a joke the other day that I love film editing, I know how to cut a picture, I think I know how to shoot it, but I don't know how to light it. And I realize it's because I didn't grow up with light. I grew up in tenements.

I'm sad to see celluloid go, there's no doubt. But, you know, nitrate went, by the way, in 1971. If you ever saw a nitrate print of a silent film and then saw an acetate print, you'd see a big difference, but nobody remembers anymore. The acetate print is what we have. Maybe. Now it's digital.

It's hard to be surprised by a film. It's hard to be surprised by another actor or by a director when you've seen enough and been around. So when I am, or when I forget that I'm watching someone's movie, or when I don't know how someone made a certain turn that I didn't expect . . . You know, I'm in.

That’s the thing with the young these days, isn’t it? They watch too many happy endings. Everything has to be wrapped up, with a smile and a tear and a wave. Everyone has learned, found love, seen the error of their ways, discovered the joys of monogamy, or fatherhood, or filial duty, or life itself. In my day, people got shot at the end of films, after learning only that life is hollow, dismal, brutish, and short.

As a director you have to be careful you don't over-design the film. You have to be careful that the period aspect does not take over.

Sometimes it's difficult directing yourself on film because you can't quite separate yourself from the subject.

I did not go into the film business to be symbolized as someone else's vision of me.

When you're lucky enough to have a good film made of your novel - and 'Never Let Me Go' is, believe me, a heartbreakingly good film indeed - you get wonderfully talented individuals each focusing on their special area.

Is everybody in?... Is everybody in?... Is everybody in? The ceremony is about to begin... The program for this evening is not new. You've seen this entertainment through and through. You've seen your birth, your life and death. You might recall all the rest. Did you have a good world when you died? Enough to base a movie on?

In my view, the only way to see a film remains the way the filmmaker intended: inside a large movie theater with great sound and pristine picture.

In film, it's very important to not allow yourself to get sentimental, which, being British, I try to avoid. People sometimes regard sentimentality as emotion. It is not. Sentimentality is unearned emotion.

The great film editor is not a cutter, he's a storyteller, right?

People define gay cinema solely by content: if there are gay characters in it, it’s a gay film... Heterosexuality to me is a structure as much as it is a content. It is an imposed structure that goes along with the patriarchal, dominant structure that constrains and defines society. If homosexuality is the opposite or the counter-sexual activity to that, then what kind of a structure would it be?

I always thought songs are movies for the ears and films are like songs for the eyes.

When a dramatic actor does a funny film, people are like, 'Wonderful! I didn't know he was funny!' But when it flips, people can get really thrown by it.

I never want to make the kind of film whose impact ends when the audience leaves the cinema.

It is not my job to compare my movies. I don't like to compare my films with other movies because I don't really have that perspective. It is an intellectual exercise, but it doesn't intuitively come to me.

When I was younger, all I cared about was what people thought of me and my films. Now I care less about catering, hand-serving, hand-feeding the audience. I've gotten to the point now in my life where I'm serving myself.