Quotes from Bennett Miller

You make a movie and you'd like it to be appreciated, respected, embraced.

There is a paradox in politics that what it takes to get elected is not necessarily what it takes to govern, and my feeling is that trying to control things too much feels icky to me.

Silence is absorption, and when you're watching a film and you're that quiet and you're that still, at least from my experience of watching films, that indicates an absorption, where you're really in the moment. You're really present. What you're seeing is vital to you in that moment, and it's tingling, and it's alive, and it matters.

I'm attracted to stories of people who don't belong together, who embark on something and find themselves in places they don't belong.

I don't know of a filmmaker who does not feel buoyed and lifted when their peers embrace the work.

I want to work with performers who really are ready to lose their minds, you know? People who are established and have talent, but who are ready to break new ground and really be cracked open in a new way.

I think the mind has a way of getting to where it needs to get to. If you are persistent.

Adam Sandler in 'Punch-Drunk Love' is brilliant. Brilliant, brilliant.

I'm not going to take something based on budget and do something just for the sake of it. I want to make good films.

For me, personally, the value of a film is not determined by a review, but the health of the film is.

I think I approach things with an outsider's perspective.

I don't like sensationalizing events. Instead of making waves, I want to make everything settle, so we can see to the bottom of things.

I've never even watched one of my films since they're completed.

Film as a medium, like a novel as a medium, possesses a unique ability to communicate. Film is capable of communicating in a way that no other medium can, and I would say the same for the novel.

There's really powerful and potentially dominating forces when you make a film that can harm it if you're incapable of orchestrating things.

A film cannot make it into the culture without the support of critics.

What I will say - one thing that is attractive about getting a real film made within the studio system is that studio systems, with their marketing and distribution, have real power.

People without fathers tend to have two predominant characteristics. They tend to believe anything is possible. At the same time there's an anxiety and an unending insecurity. It's a very American thing because back in the past, we lost our fathers or father. The king.

I am attracted to anything that does not feel derivative.

If you find yourself considering a project that seems like a layup, then you're diluted, or that movie's probably not the right movie for you to be making.

Mark Ruffalo is Mark Ruffalo - no explanation needed. He has the biggest heart of anyone I've ever met, and he's sort of the Dave Schultz of the entertainment industry.

There's always something happening in pretty much every moment of every scene of everything I've ever worked on in longform that's not being expressed or acknowledged.

One of the biggest turnoffs is being presented with an idea that's already, to a degree, complete. That's not an adventure, and it's not a learning experience. It's more of a chore. Then you become a technician with taste, as opposed to an explorer and an author.

It's hard. It's hard to get a film made properly.