Quotes About Filmmaker

I've been a documentary photographer for much longer than I have been a filmmaker.

I had a background in theater as an actor, and then a photographer, and then as an experimental filmmaker and editor.

When I was writing the story of 'Omerta' I was not writing it to make a film or something. But when a filmmaker like Hansal Mehta picked up my story and turned it into a film, I thought that now I can consider myself as a legitimate writer.

I have three sons, and the oldest wants to play pirates all the time. It has all these associations of living some kind of very free life. It's interesting for me as a filmmaker to show a whole different side of that.

I always liked the idea in 'Potter' that you don't choose the wand, the wand chooses you, and that relics decide when you're ready to handle them. I'm a cinephile first and a filmmaker second, and it's all swimming in the subconscious.

I actually grew up wanting to be a filmmaker. I wanted to make movies, and music was a detour, almost.

My dad couldn't connect to my wanting to be a filmmaker. He was very connected in entertainment, and through him I met Steven Spielberg and got rides on his private plane to California. I'd see Spielberg's people reading scripts. I was like, 'That's what I want to be when I grow up.'

It's only normal for me to work with my family because I think they are talented and because there's a warmth when I'm working. As a filmmaker, sometimes you are very fragile. You are in a very fragile situation most of the time. I think it's important to be surrounded by people you just get along with.

Yes, I am extremely choosy. You decide whether to do a film or not only after you meet and talk to the film-maker. Only someone who thinks out of the box excites me.

I feel like surf films are something I go back to for some balance - to reset myself as a filmmaker. They're something I'll always gravitate towards.

As a filmmaker, my approach is to come in not with preconceived notions, but with curiosity, and in that way, whether my subjects are James Carville or Anna Wintour or Dick Cheney, I am always surprised.

I don't want to be an old-man filmmaker, making old-man movies, and I don't want to be the one not to know when to leave the party.

Young people should investigate where the filmmaker stands on the issue of file sharing, before they spend money on them at all.

With docs, there's often a very direct communication between the filmmaker and the audience. With narrative movies, we leave it a little bit more open.

Music is, for me, a great tool of a filmmaker, the same way cinematography, the acting, editing, post-production, the costumes are. You know, to help you tell a story.

If I was not a film-maker I'd probably be a musician. I like Kanye West, Jay-Z, R&B, classical, jazz and all kinds of music, but I'd say soulful World Music is my favorite.

The nature of the video camera really makes you focus on the present. Since I have always been a diarist filmmaker, not one who stages scenes with actors, it has always been about the present moment.

For me, as a documentary filmmaker, I'm interested in telling stories of real people whose experiences tell us something about ourselves or our history, or who we are and our potential.

To be a lone filmmaker thousands of miles from home with nobody believing in me, that seems romantic.

Pop music can get inside us and enter our memory bubbles. It provides those true Proustian moments, unlocking sensations, unlocking our imaginations. Music inspired me as a filmmaker.

For me, it was all about working with an inspirational filmmaker.

For ages I thought I'd wasted my career doing visual effects, I wanted to be a filmmaker. And then I've learnt at the end of it all that actually visual effects was probably the best training ground I could have had.

The film-maker Alejandro Jodorowsky - his films are hard to watch - they're so dense and rich - but they're probably the best things ever made. And Spike Milligan, who was light years ahead of the rest - I played some of his stuff to Jack Black once. He'd never heard of him, so watching him listen to Spike for the first time was just hilarious.

I understand the rules of Superman - not necessarily better than anyone else - but better than a normal filmmaker would. After doing 'Watchmen' and digging that deep into the why of superheroes, when Superman is presented to you, I felt like I was in a unique position to say 'I get this guy. I know what this is.'