Quotes from John Lee Hancock

I remember going to McDonald's for the first time probably when I was in college. And then I remember going and visiting a friend in Wyoming, and he said, 'We're going to do something special. We're going to McDonald's.'

How many superhero movies can we have? It seems like there are 19 a week. They're making money, though, and people are going to see them. So, I get it. I understand completely.

I think that all the anger and cynicism comes from suppressing things that we always wanted.

A good deed is a good deed.

Don't worry about the little factual details. Get to the heart of it.

If America had a motto, it would be pull yourself up by the bootstraps, work harder than the next guy, have a goal and achieve it.

I've never read a script in which you are actively pulling for the protagonist in the beginning, but little by little, you lose that.

I got an English degree in college and then went to law school because I didn't know what else to do. I was a lawyer in Houston, Texas. I started writing plays and screenplays, and after about three years of practicing, I decided I would move to Los Angeles and give it a shot.

Any time you have people of different races in a movie that's about America, there's going to be a racial component.

I think any time you've got a story based on a true story, no matter how accurate it is, obviously it's still fictitious.

We felt a responsibility to the McDonald brothers and to Ray Kroc to be as factual as possible. We didn't have a responsibility to make anyone look good or anybody look bad, just to try our best to be honest.

I grew up in Texas City, Texas. I didn't know anybody who was a director or whose parents or grandparents were directors. I met somebody from a nearby town one time whose father had been to the moon - it was far more likely to be an astronaut than it was to be a writer or a director.

I like some time away to recharge the batteries, not only physically, but emotionally so that I get to the point where I'm just dying to direct again and then that's the right time to do it again.

Whenever a film has three different release dates, people understandably assume that there must be something wrong with it.

A corporation that is publicly traded, it has one goal: to make money. It doesn't have a soul. If it does have a soul, it comes from the people who run it.

You set out to tell a good story. You don't do it because there is a deep message involved, because the movie is almost always bad when you do that. Your job No. 1 is for it to be entertaining, and if it's inspiring, that is great, too.

Every time you do a true story - and I've done a few - you have to look in the mirror and say, 'That's close enough. I'm comfortable with this.' You're always going to compress time; you're going to change the order of things. But I don't think you want to tell a big lie. You want to think that you're embracing the truth.

You set out to tell a good story. You don't do it because there is a deep message involved because the movie is almost always bad when you do that.

'The Blind Side' took forever to get it out of 20th Century Fox in turnaround. It was one of three different movies I was involved with then. 'The Blind Side' just happened to be the one that got made.

I've got twins and a lovely wife and a great life and I don't want to miss that. So if I'm going to miss that it's got to be for something really good.

Many years ago, I was a producer on a movie called 'My Dog Skip.' Willie Morris, the great southern writer, had written the book. We had adapted it and taken 17 years of his life and compressed it into one year.

I think that, anybody with a strong will to tell a story, then that is fantastic. I think it's fantastic. I think sometimes people have what I'll call an ulterior motive with a story.

Every generation comes upon the movie again, and then, invariably, the books have a spike in sales because people want to read more about Mary Poppins.

You pick a project. You think, 'I can succeed at this. I can help them. I can make it so that they'll want to call me again the next time.'