Quotes About Cinema

Over the years, if you look at the films of people like Billy Wilder, Preston Sturges, Frank Capra, their supporting characters, even if it's a doorman with two lines, always seem three-dimensional. To me, that's a sign of good storytelling.

'Sunset Boulevard' by Billy Wilder, it's one of my favorite films. I love all the movies from the 1950s.

Every movie is wildly different. So many of the problems are the same, but they take on different guises.

My dad was a film professor, so he would take me to wildly inappropriate movies.

The big gamble in 'Focus' - it's a Will Smith movie that dares to be small.

The only way to ensure a film is going to sell is put Will Smith in it and you open it in 3,000 theaters and make sure we have all the top promotional spots in each venue.

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.

When I was seven, I wanted to be Esther Williams. I was drummed out of Brownies because I snuck off to the cinema to watch an Esther Williams festival - my greatest wish if I get to Hollywood is to meet her.

Because in both TV and film every story under the sun is being told, and so music shouldn't be restricted to have to follow, like, the John Williams template or something. I love John Williams, but that sound doesn't suit every story.

I was in so many Esther Williams pictures with Ricardo Montalban and I always was his girl no matter what the story.

Cinema is a director's medium, so you're saying, 'What do you want?' Being an actor is about adapting - physically and emotionally. If that means you have to look great for it and they can make you look great, then thank you. And if you have to have everything washed away, then I'm willing to do that too.

I would have loved to have been in 'Bottle Rocket' to take over Owen Wilson's character Dignan, because he's just awesome and amazing. I would have loved to have been in 'The Darjeeling Limited' maybe. I think that would have been a good one to be in.

She was obsessed with French and Swedish cinema. I also remember our mother showing us 'Gone With the Wind' very early on. She absolutely loved Vivien Leigh, so it must have been a formative experience for me, thinking, 'Oh, maybe one day I'll be like Vivien Leigh.'

'Bombay Velvet' is my most romantic film, it's my 'Titanic' or 'Gone With The Wind.'

Pictures that will live on for years, like 'The Birth of a Nation' and 'Gone With the Wind,' had great historical events in the background.

Thinking about making a love story without music was really frightening, Sciamma admitted. Because every love story we know, we think about 'Titanic' we think about the music, we think about 'Gone with the Wind' we think about the music, we think about 'E.T.' we think about the music, and every love story has its own tune, 'That's our song.'

The end of 'City Lights' makes me cry every time I see it - when Charlie Chaplin walks by the shop window and the once-blind girl brings him a flower and pins it to his lapel.

Whereas 'Avatar' and other movies get shocks out of their three-dimensionality, 'Gatsby' is going to be about inviting the audience into this larger-than-life drama, letting them almost be inside the room rather than looking at it through the window. I think it will really work.

Film is a window to the real world but a lie that makes you believe the unbelievable.

I feel like my job as a storyteller and director is to create an experience where the audience forgets they're in a cinema and can get lost in the story. Things popping out of the screen call attention to the artifice of what you're doing, so I use 3D as more of a window into a world behind the screen.

For the whole history of cinema, we've been experiencing movies and television through a two-dimensional, letterboxed window. But once you can start programming entertainment for all the different senses, it becomes a wholly different medium.

It used to be that watching a film was a very special occasion, the same way flying was. Before, if you took a flight from New York to L.A., most of the windows would be open. Now, we get on planes and we just close them because we're so used to what it feels like. I think the same thing has happened with cinema.

I've never seen 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre', I've never seen 'Halloween', I've never seen any of the 'Friday the 13ths.'

If I never did another film after 'Paris, Texas,' I'd be happy.