Top 25 Gore Verbinski Quotes

All the traditional westerns are about choice and the individual. When progress comes it’s much more difficult to define the individual in that world.

I try to push and find something awkward. The gems to me are truly awkward situations, and you have to have somebody who’s willing to fail because those can’t be conceived. They never play if they’re thought about and discussed too much. You have to create them right at the moment and look for something honest.

I’d love to do a PG-13 animated adventure. It would be great.

I like horror movies, and in fact I like them even more now after making one. I just think they’re much more liberating because you don’t really have to apply a very strict logic.

There is a sense that animated movies are suddenly a genre. I just don’t believe they are; it’s a technique to tell a story.

I just don’t know when we all decided that if it doesn’t fit in a Happy Meal box, it’s not for kids. I remember flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz, and I grew up watching Monty Python. I think that kids can handle a lot more than we give them credit for, especially when it comes to the absurd.

Nothing’s occurring in animation – you manufacture everything.

When I speak of drama, I’m really referring to just ‘desperately trying not to be ordinary’. Trying to get something that has a little bit of friction, conflict, absurdity.

I think you can never ever lie, ever. If you don’t know, say, ‘I don’t know’.

I just think it’s growth when you pursue something you’re not sure you can do.

If you imagine yourself as a craftsman at ILM, you spend your days tumbling buses and animating shards of glass. You’re doing a lot of visual effects work.

I think my parents gave me a love of learning; from there you set out on your own path.

Honestly, every person, every individual has a process, and my philosophy, whether it’s an actor or an animator, is you try to understand the process that person has so you can get the most out of them, but I think you have to sort of manipulate that process with honesty.

My respect for Westerns have gone way, way up. It’s hard and treacherous work. It’s hard to find people these days who can ride horses like that and jump onto trains.

Everyone always wants to find the answer, to feel that things are resolved. But in dreams, maybe there isn’t an answer so much.

I just watched so many Westerns as a kid that you end up using archetypes and sort of tropes of that genre, because there’s a language there and you can twist it and turn it on its head or play to it or go sideways at any time.

On a live-action movie, things happen that are unexpected. In animation, you have to fabricate the feeling. That takes a tremendous amount of nuance until the film becomes sentient and gives back.

My respect for animation has gone way up. It’s a truckload of work. I have to sit with my animators the same way I’d sit with my actors and cast them.

My respect for animators and animation directors has gone way, way up and it is just not something you can phone in.

Raising kids these days is hard. I’m the second to last child in my family. I think it’s tough; I have two kids, I see them and I feel like I see things in them; they awaken the inner child in you.

For me, some of the happiest moments on a live-action film are the awkward moments. One actor says something to another actor. They didn’t expect that performance from that actor; that affects their return performance.

Animation is a technique, not a genre.

I think comedy is drama, often. It’s hard to have comedy over a period of time – commercials are one thing, but over a period of time – comedy and tragedy go hand in hand.

I think when you get people who are really talented and you take them out of their comfort zone, you get a lot more out of them.

It’s a mistake for Hollywood to impose themselves on the gaming space. Not only is it arrogant, but it hasn’t really worked.