Quotes About Filmmaking

Yet as a director, I don't feel you have to identify with your characters as a requirement to make a movie.

I never intended to become a commercial filmmaker in the first place. What I do requires time and experimentation. Commercial work is often not the best way to get the most innovative work, because it's about money and marketing. Although advertising is now embracing non-commercial people.

As a director, nobody told me I'd be talking to people all day. I'm naturally reclusive - I feel myself peek out at a certain point and go, 'All the extrovert in me is done! I'm on reserve!'

Truth be told, actually, my favorite director of the Movie Brats was not Scorsese. Loved him. But my favorite director of the Movie Brats was Brian de Palma. I actually met De Palma right after I'd done 'Reservoir Dogs,' and I was very beside myself.

Reservoir Dogs is a small film, and part of its charm was that it was a small film. I'd probably make it for $3 million now so I'd have more breathing room.

According to me, when a filmmaker is writing a role, a certain actor comes to his mind. Now whether that actor resides in Mumbai or in the Malabar is hardly of any consequence.

As for direction, I definitely do not have the patience or the resilience to make a film. Directing a film is very, very hard.

I have been a director who has starred, participated on both sides of the filmmaking process.

The reverberation of the freedom of making 'Schizopolis' absolutely resulted in 'Out of Sight' and everything that followed.

When I sign on for a project, I'm there to give the director all the material he or she might need to tell their story, and that's the number one priority.

What you see in my script may not be what's in the film. Sometimes it's a very scary thing, when I have to shoot in the morning and the scene's not good enough, and it's only me there, and there's no signal to even call the others and say, think of a better line.

I think I signed my left kidney to Disney and my right kidney to George Lucas.

Ram Gopal Varma had signed me for 'Satya' and two days before the shoot, I was dropped out of the film. He didn't even have the decency to call me or my manager and inform me about the reality. I learnt from the press that he had begun shooting without me.

I think I should have made 'Dead Silence' as an independent movie.

Other than advances in technology and equipment, making a movie is the same as it was when I started, at least. I don't go back to the silent era.

When I was a kid, I would make kung fu movies with the kids in the neighborhood, and I would be the guy behind the camera directing everybody, but they were all very silly little shorts and comedy bits.

We are so aware of how silly our movies are as we're making them.

I grew up on Shane Black movies, and I grew up on Joel Silver movies.

Wes Anderson grew up in Houston, and he and I talk about Manhattan in similar ways, as a kind of fantasy world.

The similarity between the big directors I've worked with is that they allow the writer to find a way of doing what they want done without saying 'do it this way.' They describe what they want, then letting the writer figure out a way to do it.

I want to direct more often. The job of a producer brings its own benefit as you start to see the simplicity of film making. But yes there is a constant battle between the director and producer in me.

Well, getting behind the camera is something I've always wanted to get involved with. Ever since I was doing movies like 'Zathura' I was very interested in all the different jobs on set and kind of soaking all the information up like a sponge.

I went through this very serious Woody Allen phase in college and a little bit after college. I still see his movies.

I think everyone who makes movies should be forced to do television. Because you have to finish. You have to get it done, and there are a lot of decisions made just for the sake of making decisions. You do something because it's efficient and because it gets the story told and it connects to the audience.