Quotes About Film

I want more images onscreen because when I was growing up, I think, like, that one kiss in 'The Color Purple' was the one thing that I had. Or 'The Watermelon Woman.'

My parents were really encouraging of me doing theater, but the one thing they did do was say, 'You're not allowed to do film or television in high school.'

When you have an intimate encounter with mortality as my family and I did with my mom's death, I took a long look at my life and I asked myself what was the one thing that I hadn't done that I had really wanted to do. And it was to write and direct a film.

If I wasn't a film-maker, I'd be a film critic. It's the only thing I'd be qualified to do.

I don't prefer much of film over stage... The only thing I prefer is the paycheck.

Every film is a crapshoot. It's a mystery when a movie comes together. I've never been able to figure it out. I don't know how I make my choices. The only thing you can do is know there's something about a character that you really want to experience.

My whole thing was, as much as I was inspired by what my parents do, and growing up on film sets, watching that made me really want to do that. I am my own person, and I think that the only thing with the Hemingway name is that it has gotten me in the door.

The only thing more intimidating than a huge international film star is your mother-in-law.

The only thing in life that really gives me any peace is just being lost in the process of creating something, whether it's the film or painting and drawing, which has been a big part of my life, for a long time.

The only thing I can ever do is make a film that I can respond to. I could not make a romantic comedy for college girls. I wouldn't know how that works.

Your choices are very important. The only thing you have as actors are your choices: the option to say no to something. You don't want to take on a really bad job and be terrible in something - especially in film, because if you're bad in it, you're bad in it forever.

The only thing that surprised me about 'Lincoln' is that most of the critics who reviewed the film seem not to have grasped what should have been apparent right from the start, which is that 'Lincoln' is at bottom a play with pictures, not a screenplay.

The problem with big films is they snowball very rapidly and you can never pull back. It's a pipeline that needs to be fed.

The great thing with film is that it doesn't have an ego. It's just a film. Everybody that makes them has an ego, and the problem with awards and stuff like that is that it always affects the egos, and everyone gets stained by it in some way. And that can be fine and very innocent, but it can be horrible as well.

The problem with doing a schlocky or big budget studio film is that it wouldn't actually be fun for me. It wouldn't be exciting.

The problem with a lot of narrative films is that they're not real enough.

A film must have two elements - it must deal with the real world and show how it could be made better.

Now having said that, I realize that releasing a film in the real world is like trying to get General Motors to release a handmade car.

Sometimes films might not work, but you as an actor should keep working. Because no matter how much you panic about how your film didn't work, eventually, when you step out in the real world, there are people who value you as an artist.

Movies like 'Gul Makai' carry an important message, such movies should be made as it shows us the struggle people go through in the real world.

'Faults,' in a lot of ways, is still is a heightened film, but the end of the day, it's the real world. It's in '86, is the arbitrary date that I've set. And so I went about it in a more realistic way.

'She's Gotta Have It' and 'School Daze,' I really didn't know what I was doing. And the biggest indicator of that was the acting. 'Do the Right Thing' was like the first film where I really felt comfortable working with actors.

'Do the Right Thing' was like the first film where I really felt comfortable working with actors.

After 'Rock On!,' when I started acting, and I sang in the film, people asked me, 'What was the need to sing in your film?' and things like that. I really don't have an answer for it. In terms of what made me do it? It just felt like the right thing to do.