Quotes from Roland Joffe

Good directing is about getting the performance to be just what's right for the movie.

I think a film should have a gestation period of at least two or three years.

It's hard to blame someone because they simply don't have time.

I think that will be a lot of fun for audiences to get the same stream of consciousness that was going through my head at the time. It was very exciting to suddenly recall what I was feeling at the time.

Even if we don't know it or aren't aware of it, politics and philosophy are really what make our up lives.

The history of the white man in India really jumped up and bit me in the neck.

I try to address my audiences intelligently. The man in the street counts, but sometimes he forgets that he counts.

Very good coaches for ski jumpers stand at the top of the slope and watch the jumpers prepare, rather than standing at the bottom and watching them land.

I'm not a very serious person. You know how they say that clowns are very funny in public and are really sad at home? I'm really kind of stupid at home and more serious in public.

I like cinema audiences. I respect them, and I talk to them just like I would anybody I know.

We're a strange animal, so often destroying what we love for selfish ends, and yet tantalized by the sense that there are other choices if only we had strength to make them. In the politics of 400 years ago, we find the same questions we battle with today.

I like DVDs so much - it's such a better format than VHS.

When you look at our world, the truth is that we're all under the influence of politics.

Much of Indian science seems intuitive and not bound by the rigid thinking of classical scientists.

Even if we don't know it or aren't aware of it, politics and philosophy are really what make our up lives.

I like cinema audiences. I respect them, and I talk to them just like I would anybody I know.

I'm not a very serious person. You know how they say that clowns are very funny in public and are really sad at home? I'm really kind of stupid at home and more serious in public.

Making the City Of Joy gave me the best political education of my life. It became a wrestling match between an Englishman who had gradually ceased to be a Marxist, and a culture that was becoming more Marxist by the day.

If you spend a whole afternoon just eating popcorn and watching football, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. But if that's all you do, you get swept along with the tide, without any idea of where you're going.

I think the job of movie reviewing can be really tough. If a film has layers that need to be thought about, it's easy to get missed the first time around.

They suggested I should introduce an element of reincarnation in the story. At first, I thought that was silly. But then, this whole time dimension began to fascinate me.

Conventionally, one looks at history as something of the past. But after Einstein, who knows what is in the past and what is in the present?

In India, one has to plan according to the monsoons.

Making the City Of Joy gave me the best political education of my life. It became a wrestling match between an Englishman who had gradually ceased to be a Marxist, and a culture that was becoming more Marxist by the day.