Words matter. These are the best Paul Greengrass Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
Very few people do bad things because they’re bad. They generally do bad things because they think they’re the right thing to do, but they’re misplaced.
I’ve seen a lot of political violence in my life. I know what it looks like. I know what it smells like. I know what motivates young men to do it. I’ve talked to them about it. I know what victims feel like, you know? I know the abominable effect it has on politics. I know how intractable it is.
Studio people are bright. Empowering. They don’t want to have to interfere creatively. That’s their horror story, too.
One of the things that makes the Bourne movies so exciting, I think, is you do get to go on a journey. Generally, through the franchise, that journey is in Europe.
The people who went on that airplane were unexceptional.
I always tell young film-makers, ‘Find the song that only you can sing.’ It doesn’t just come to you. It’s trial and error and disappointment before you find, slowly but surely, the confidence to express your film-making identity.
No one person is the author of a Bourne film. The truth is it’s a coalition of people who share the same vision for Bourne and his world, and we… its remarkably collaborative and collective.
Directing is all tied up with childhood loneliness. It’s such an odd thing to end up doing.
Action is only really compelling when it reveals character – character revealed through action, and not action for its own sake.
In the end, it’s acting, it’s not real. But every director will tell you that you have to create conditions that create tension, because tension is what makes drama feel real.
It’s a circus life, the movies. It’s a lot of travelling, a lot of antisocial hours; there’s a lot of it that’s about escaping from life.
This new global economy, it’s all based on the sea routes.
With a franchise movie, it’s got to turn the wheels of the industry, and the studio has to have them. So you start with a release date. They say we’re going to make a new ‘Bourne’ film, and it comes out summer of X. Then they start on a script, and invariably, the script is not ready in time.
Tom Hanks has built his career playing ordinary men.
Some filmmakers are more eclectic than others. I’m not one of those! I’m interested in what I’m interested in, which is films about the world, about what’s going on. I started in TV documentaries with ‘World in Action,’ and those interests feed into the films I make now.
I just don’t get on with institutions. I need simple relationships with people who believe in me.
My films express me, my sense of rhythm, my sense of impact, my sense of kinetic energy. I like films to move, but I like also clear storytelling and characters, and most of all, I like authentic emotion.
I’ll always see myself as a British filmmaker, powerfully so.
To make a film is eighteen months of your life. It’s seven days a week. It’s twenty hours a day.
What attracts me to Bourne’s world is that is a real world, and I think I’m most comfortable there. But I come to a Bourne movie to have fun as a filmmaker, to strut my stuff, and that’s part of the fun of franchise filmmaking.
I don’t storyboard like some. I mean, all directors are different. I plan meticulously – really meticulously.
Acting is many things. Acting is playing lines, of course, but it’s much more profound than that. Acting is truth-telling and trying to find the truth in a human situation, which will be sketched out by a screenwriter with all the skill that a screenwriter can do; but in the end, that’s just the map of the journey.
Remembering is painful, it’s difficult, but it can be inspiring and it can give wisdom.
Making movies is both entirely ludicrous and incredibly hard. It’s a preposterous way to spend your time. You give up a lot for the privilege of doing it, and one of the things you get are relationships of immense trust that you see forged in situations of immense stress.
When you think of the Cold War, there are various places where you imagine espionage. Espionage crossroads of the Cold War bring you to the backstreets of Berlin, or Vienna.
