Quotes About Films

It seems like the studios are either making giant blockbusters, or really super-small indies. And the mid-level films I grew up on, like 'Back to the Future' and all those John Hughes movies, the studios aren't doing. It's hard to get them on their feet.

I like the fact that major studios have been attempting horror films recently.

I really don't consider myself to be a conventional Hollywood star. I've never really been marketed by the big studios to do mass market box office films.

I think indie films are really important, because they show the studios and the audiences when they see them, great stories. Really interesting, small stories.

The fact is that HBO is doing the kind of films and the kind of stories that the movie industry used to do. You look at a lot of the specialty sections of studios that have gone under... and there's no doubt in my mind why filmmakers and screenwriters and actors are ending up at a place like HBO. They do it better than anybody.

If you have a career like mine, which is so identified with Hollywood, with big studios and stars, you wonder if maybe you shouldn't go off and do what the world thinks of as more personal films with lesser-known people. But I think I've fooled everybody. I've made personal films all along. I just made them in another form.

I'm interested in the kind of anti-establishment ethos that goes with making an independent movie. I like to bring that to studio films - usually to the consternation of the studios.

Most horror films are made very cynically, and they're usually made by studios for an audience that they know is there, no matter what they put out. And there are always exceptions - every year, it seems we have a great one coming out.

I make these little films. I'm just a working person. I just study people a little bit more. It's more sociological, and it's funny anyway - not that serious. It's not like false humility. I just take it for what it is.

I was studying English, as you will, in the day, and five nights a week, I would be at the cinema. That continued throughout my 20s, which was also the 1980s - there was a lot of really good films coming out then.

In Tamil or Malayalam, there was a time when light films ruled. Then, a spate of drama or women-oriented stunt films followed.

Doing stunts all by myself has been a deliberate decision because I wanted to do all stunts by myself because female actors don't get the opportunity to work in action films, and I think when you get such an opportunity, then you have to make most of it.

I've always wanted to do stunts for films and television, and I'm doing exactly that. I'm glad it is my job, but I've said it before that I'd probably do it for free.

I've made a lot of stupid action films. But when we made The Matrix, we saw that people wanted more than that.

I grew up loving films and making stupid movies with a good friend of mine, who now actually has a career in a really prominent special effects house, so he's still doing it. We just started messing around with a camera.

The horror movie will not go away. Look at the change in the Hollywood landscape as a signifier of its durability. At one point it was just one of many styles of films called 'product' that between, say, 1930 and 1970, the movie city ground out like sausages or hula hoops at a rate of four or five a week.

I wasn't really sure about the kind of films I wanted to be a part of. That's when I saw 'Aaranya Kaandam.' I was stunned; it was such a stylish film.

Personally, I prefer contemporary films, but the market calls for more period choices, especially since China opened up a cinema market in Hong Kong. There's a lot of restriction for contemporary films simply because of subject matter.

What makes a lot of suspenseful films work is very, very particular points of view and very subjective use of the camera.

I never seek controversy or foresee it for my pictures. I take a personal stand, and perhaps because my films are on contemporary subjects, people do not share my point of view.

The subjects have to come with questions for me. I don't make films where I'm a massive fan.

In the past, I think my films that focused on African subjects struggled in the marketplace because of their subject matter.

Films like 'Satya,' 'Company' needed a pan-Indian audience. The affinity for Hindi film and subjects was there.

Certain subjects are best done with stars. Certain subjects like 'Alai Payuthe' are done with non-stars. In such films, stars are a burden.