Quotes About Film

In terms of film festivals, Cannes is the greatest launch pad.

I always thought that if I ever make my Bollywood debut it should be with a film which has a good story, which has emotions, romance. 'Bittoo Boss' is all that I ever dreamt of and is the perfect launch pad for me.

One must go for a film with an open mind; a film best impacts you when your mind is a blank page to the film.

But a writer's contribution is literary and a film is not literary. When you take that stuff off the page, and cast the people who are going to fit into those roles, that's what being a director is.

In film, you have the luxury of accomplishing what you need in 24 frames every second. Comics, you only have five or six panels a page to do that.

Film can be more of a reality than a page with words can ever be.

What you write on the page has nothing to do with when you're on set. When you're on set, it has nothing to do with when you're in the editing room. And when you're in the editing room, it has nothing to do with the final movie. You just have to let it go.

Whether it is television or film, the character on the page has to speak to me.

I drove past one of the houses in Tiruvanmiyur and asked them if we could shoot there for 'Vinnaithaandi Varuvaaya' because it seemed straight out of the pages of the script.

I remember in the movies we used to do two pages a day. One in the morning and one in the afternoon.

I'm used to adapting my novels for feature film - it can be challenging to cut and compress three or four hundred pages into two hours of dramatic action.

You get paid the same for a bad film as you do for a good one.

I remember in a film of mine, though both my co-star and I were newcomers, he got far better paid than me. I was shocked and appalled. I actually asked him what different are you doing that you are getting better paid!

Right now the thing that I have learned the most is to be grateful that I have finally gotten to a point where I am being paid to make films, after eight years.

Everyone who appears in a scene gets paid.

I got paid 20 grand for my first film. And that's the lowest I ever got paid.

I know it's a film and all of that, and it's a Hollywood film, but it kind of feels like this sometimes, when you're in pain and it hurts, and you're desperate. Or you are about to cross some moral line and it's so seductive and you just do... and all that.

I have a very clear vision, and I come from film, where director is God, so if there's a clash, it's painful.

I would love to do a film with a lot of humor in it: a comedy with pain instead of a painful film with some comedy.

'The Restraint of Beasts' is a painful subject. We'd shot 60% of the film when I had to stop. The material looks great, like nothing I've ever done or even seen before. It could have been really great, definitely original.

In any movie, there are a number of scenes that get cut in an effort to keep the film from running too long. Some are of little consequence, but others are important scenes that are very painful to lose.

A way you can get really good abs in film is you get your makeup artist to paint shadows - faux washboard. But if you see me in a movie and I have great abs, it means I have a great body double.

You're making a movie, not a documentary. If you made a film like the historians would like you to make, you're not going to go and see it. I'd rather see paint dry.

When you read the book, you paint the picture but when you adapt a book then the audience will, by and large, say the book was better and every filmmaker knows this.