Quotes from Daniel Espinosa

Gangster movies are the inheritor of the Greek tragedy: it's the only genre where the audience will be disappointed if there's not a tragic ending.

It's really hard to get a coffee with someone. I have to call my agent, my agent calls their agent, their agent calls their manager, the manager calls back, the actor sends someone to the manager... then you get, 'Yeah, yeah, I'd love to have dinner at six,' and all I wanted was coffee! It can take, like, six days to get coffee.

It must have been fascinating for Bono to have Johnny Cash do a cover of his song, and hear how he translates the words that he has used. And it would be fascinating to see a great director do his take on my work.

Think about Medusa, with the snakes. If you shoot a movie in Europe, the financiers are three snakes, and they all have opinions. In Hollywood there are, like, 20 snakes.

I grew up in different parts of Africa. I grew up in Mozambique and places like that. I've been in South Africa many times.

Academically, I was never that interested. I skipped classes. My biggest dream was to have a coffee shop, but I had no idea how to get the money to do that.

If the crew is hit by the situation that we're trying to portray, I think we get a real and a stronger moment with the camerawork and the actors.

I looked at early movies with Robert Redford, and I like how Robert, even though he had that automatic charisma and was a very verbal person, he always played those more silent characters and played within the scene and never overacted.

If you just storyboard something, you've already planned it, and you're stuck in the limitations of your imagination.

I always loved when James Stewart did roles that were not so dialogue-based, like 'Vertigo.'