Quotes from Joe Carnahan

Regardless of the medium, be it television or feature or documentary, I'm not gonna distinguish and worry about my particular canon, whatever that means.

To me, still my favorite 3D film is 'Dial M for Murder.' I thought that was great. Hitchcock used it, could put you in the room, which I thought was fantastic, but I'm still not a devotee of 3D.

Think about a guy like Bob Mitchum, with his kind of chest gut not defining itself one way or the other. Was there anybody tougher? Lee Marvin was a marine sniper during the Second World War. They had this sense of themselves, and they had this product of being a man in a masculine way.

If I was ever gonna remake a Peckinpah film, it would be 'Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia.' That's my favorite Peckinpah film.

I guess I much prefer the path of the contrarian: the guy who goes against the grain a bit. The careers of the people who I admire deeply - like the Coen brothers and Soderbergh - don't repeat themselves, and they make radically different films at times, and I think that's wonderful.

'Killing Pablo' to me - as much as I love 'The Grey''s script - 'Killing Pablo' to me is the best thing I've ever written.

There's a film that I wrote that I want to do called 'The Grey,' which is about a group of pipeline workers in Alaska flying back into civilization after being remote for a number of months. The 737 they're on goes down, and they begin to be hunted by a pack of rogue wolves.

Early '90s, I was big, big into Sinatra. I was in college. I was fascinated.

I'll spend the rest of my life chasing that feeling I had on 'The Grey,' because I think we're all aware that, first and foremost, we were having an adventure, and we were also making this movie at the same time.

'The Blacklist' was really right place, right time. I read the script and met with Jon Bokenkamp, John Eisendrath, John Fox and John Davis, and we just hit it off. They understood that I was not so much trying to adapt to television, but adapt a cinematic style to the things that we were gonna do.

I don't conduct my career for when I'm dead and people say nice things about me. I conduct my career for the here and now, and what excites me, and what interests me.

I am fascinated by that notion of people are never as they seem. And that doesn't make them good or bad. It's just we don't ever really show ourselves if we don't have to.

If I can do a romantic comedy with women, that's Everest to me.

As much as I love Antonioni films, I love the Three Stooges.

Be open-minded and available to everything and not just saying it's Jesus Christ or bust. So much of the world will do that. I find it troubling... Don't be dogmatic.

I love the ambiguous kind of endings. I think, oftentimes, that's what life really is - there's no concrete path for you to take. It's always kind of a jumble of variables. Behind this door could be a beautiful woman, and behind the same door could be a tiger, you know? You don't know.

I look at Las Vegas, and I see the absolute best of what we are as Americans, and I see the absolute worst, in the same city.

'The A-Team' compared to making 'Narc' was a breeze. There's a whole other skill set and whole other kind of bone structure that goes into making a movie like 'Narc' versus 'The A-Team.'

I was not a gigantic fan of 'The A-Team' as a kid. I was a huge 'Miami Vice' fan. So for me, not necessarily to say that I put a 'Miami Vice'ish spin on 'The A-Team,' but for me, what I was most intrigued by was this notion of these four guys, these four kind of special operators.

So much of Hollywood is this kind of overly machismo, nonsensical view of masculinity, which I just don't find honest. I think it's this idea of - you know, we're told, well, 'Be a man, be a man.' But what does that mean, exactly? Does that mean you can't carry yourself with any fear? That you can't acknowledge that you're scared?

If 'The Blacklist' taught me anything, it was kind of open-ended intrigue and leaving questions unanswered. Creating this kind of mystery by virtue of depriving the audience of these easy answers was what I was kind of into.