Quotes About Filmmaking

Facts are, directors are not thinking of me; they think I only act in my films, because they're stupid. Or they think I'm a control freak, that I will try to, I don't know, pimp their scripts and just change everything, which I will never do.

We filmmakers are control freaks. For us, it's about bending the elements of a story into existence.

It feels very, very good to make a film freely, to work without having to wait years for script approval, without looking over your shoulder.

Bigger-budgeted films have more restrictions and less freedom to create. Because of this, I try to find freedom in the people I work with. I often work in ways I don't want to. It's more about controlling the situation. Lower-budget films are freer.

Clearly, the works of John Carpenter and Sam Raimi are front and center here. Argento is definitely there. But even stuff like the 'Friday the 13th' movies had quite an influence on me growing up.

I grew up torturing friends and family by making super-8 and VHS epics.

Among close friends and family members, I say whatever I want to. But, as a filmmaker, I have my responsibilities, and I have to look at so many things at the time of finalizing a script.

At times, I thought of leaving filmmaking because of the pressure and frustration 'Adhugo' had put on me.

We were working on 'Senna' for a long time before we were fully financed, so we didn't actually have an editor for a while.

What else was filmmmaking about if not a series of perfect and potent images strung together like the words of a poem?

Any filmmaker who has translated some personal vision into a film that actually gets shot and distributed is wildly successful. Congratulations! Anything after that is gravy.

I always think Michelle Williams is excellent in her work. And I do love Sofia Coppola. She always creates something so atmospheric. I love Wes Anderson, Roman Coppola, Andrea Arnold.

My dad made a film called 'Willow' when he was a young filmmaker, which screened at the Cannes film festival, and people were booing afterwards.

Hugh Wilson made it so real and he took us and it was almost when he was directing it, the way he would do it was funnier than the way we did it. And I just developed a regard for him that was unbelievable.

I couldn't imagine screaming 'Action!' on an outdoor set over a wind machine or whatever.

Nothing prepares you for shooting in the sea. Some days the sea is choppy, some days the waves are long. When there is no wind, it's fantastic to shoot, but your brain is burning because of the heat. You are shooting hand-held and taking a crane on a boat, which is risky since you can get toppled over.

I've been making films since the '70s and trying to develop that best possible fiction-film style that I feel is the most expressive. At a certain point, I felt I was winding up making the same film stylistically and I found that boring.

Filmmaking, whatever the window dressing or the scale of a film may be, is eventually about telling a story.

At one point, I was greenlighting films and scripts that shouldn't have been made based on the fact that they had that stamp of approval of an Academy Award winner. And the good news is I got to learn the real process of filmmaking - directing, storyboarding, writing.

When I decided to direct a film, I went through around 200 to 300 scripts. Out of which, 12 subjects were finalized and 'Aata Pata Laapta' emerged as the winner.

I like to make movies in Texas because that's where I learned how to do it. I know the industry there, I know the people, I know the crews. But it's hard to make films in Texas.

I didn't care about that because I'm not a diplomatic person to begin with. I just went along with things and did what I wanted to do because I knew they had to shoot their 12 pages a day. And when they realized that I didn't alter the text they really didn't mind what I did.

I like to read and dream and create music that is based on the imagery of text. If you have the combination of a great book and a great filmmaker, what could be better for the composer?

I like shooting movies in Thailand very much because the government is so cooperative there. The police help you to close the roads for shooting.