Quotes About Cinema

I was a young film student around the time of the new wave in film in the 1970s; old Hollywood was naff and over. For me, as a film student, I was going to see French and Italian cinema; American cinema was 'Easy Rider' and 'Taxi Driver.' Everything was gritty.

We grew up near a cinematheque in Cleveland, so we were very influenced by international cinema, the French New Wave, Italian neo-realists.

I'd love if between 'La La Land' and 'The Greatest Showman' we generate a new wave of movie musicals because, as an art form, musical narrative is so engaging and has produced some of the most iconic moments in cinema history.

I'm coming from an artistic background, from Europe, making films with Lars Van Trier like 'Breaking the Waves,' 'Dancer in the Dark,' all his films, 'The Kingdom.' But I like both, I like the totally artificial, commercial films where the actor has five or six bodyguards, I like that.

My favorite movie is 'House of Wax.'

When I make a film, I am hoping to reinvent the genre a little bit. I just do it my way. I make my own little Quentin versions of them... I consider myself a student of cinema. It's almost like I am going for my professorship in cinema, and the day I die is the day I graduate. It is a lifelong study.

In all, I was in 16 movies, including 'The Bishop's Wife' with Cary Grant, Loretta Young and David Niven; I was in 'Rio Grande' with John Wayne, 'Albuquerque' with Randall Scott, 'Blue Skies' with Bing Crosby and 'Hans Christian Anderson' with Danny Kaye.

My favorite actors when I was a kid were in their '60s. Spencer Tracy, Humphrey Bogart, John Wayne.

I watched a lot of old movies. Clint Eastwood movies, a lot of John Wayne films, a lot of movies that celebrated the region of where I lived.

There's so many great Western films. Let's see, 'Red River,' any of those Henry Fonda movies are fantastic. Any of those John Ford movies are fantastic. I love all the Eastwood 'Man With No Name' movies, John Wayne, 'True Grit.'

Even in Haiti, I saw John Wayne movies. American cinema has always been the dominant cinema throughout the world, and people tend to forget that. People aren't just seeing these films in California or Florida. They're seeing them in Haiti, in Congo, in France, in Italy and in Asia. That is the power of Hollywood.

The cinema began with a passionate, physical relationship between celluloid and the artists and craftsmen and technicians who handled it, manipulated it, and came to know it the way a lover comes to know every inch of the body of the beloved. No matter where the cinema goes, we cannot afford to lose sight of its beginnings.

The girls who come into Tamil cinema today are educated and from well-to-do families. Unlike the actresses of my generation, they do not need cinema for survival. We cannot write a small role - dead cast, as I call it - and expect them to be excited.

It is easy to be a hero in films as even a weak person can fight with any number of goons and get applauses from viewers.

There is no point in performing in a film with a weak subject.

London centre has a wealth of creative activity but there are parts of London where there isn't a cinema or where library provision is quite weak.

I pity the French Cinema because it has no money. I pity the American Cinema because it has no ideas.

When I made 'Pizza,' all I had in my mind was to make the film reach as many people as possible.

My movie is born first in my head, dies on paper; is resuscitated by the living persons and real objects I use, which are killed on film but, placed in a certain order and projected on to a screen, come to life again like flowers in water.

If I can work with Shyam Benegal and Yash Chopra together, who are the kings of art house and commercial cinema and win awards for both of them then it means I have placed myself everywhere.

I'm so happy when someone does something original, and there's no focus group or planning committee. If the cinema doesn't get an injection of that once in a while, we're in trouble.

My films, I've tried to put a message into them. It's not about the gore; it's not about the horror element that are in them. It's more about the message, for me. That's what it is, and I'm using this platform to be able to show my feelings of what I think.

Film used to have to be niche and find its audience in a little art house cinema, and TV had to work for everybody. And now it's kind of flipped where there's so many platforms that TV can be incredibly niche.

People ask me about 'The Hurt Locker' a lot, and it's an incredible piece of filmmaking - as are 'Band of Brothers' and 'Platoon' and 'Full Metal Jacket' and 'Apocalypse Now.' But they're not necessarily true to war in a literal sense. What they are, really, are brilliant movies about Hollywood's idea of war.