Words matter. These are the best Allison Anders Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
Art should never be held above our decency to each other.
I had always felt deep down that I owned the characters. Much as I adored and cherished the work of my actors, I felt that they were cast to do and be what I could not physically do or be.
Trauma creates one of four types of people: victims, rescuers, or perps – and if you’re really lucky and really strong and very willing and brave, survivors.
You still get the movies made. A filmmaker can always scrape up money to do a movie. The passion drives it. And you’ll get the money. Money’s the easiest thing. But the hardest thing is finding a way for people to see your movie.
The first thing I did for TV was a pilot for CBS.
For me, the most exciting thing is that Jane Campion is a woman we can all really look up to. She doesn’t have the body of work that some other directors do – no woman director does – but her work is so consistently original, wonderful, masterful.
You end up giving up half your salary every time you make a movie because you need the money to make the movie you have in your head.
This practice of skinny actresses donning fat suits is essentially the new and acceptable blackface in Hollywood.
Music has always been a great solace for me. It’s still something that gives me far more joy than movies, I must say. I love movies, too. But somehow, music can transport you. There are so many different kinds of experiences you can have with music.
When ‘Gas Food Lodging’ was released, I had already shot ‘Mi Vida Loca.’
There’s never been a ‘girl wonder’ mythology.
Roman Polanski is one of my favorite filmmakers, and John Phillips one of my favorite songwriters. I had the honor to meet each of these men and was almost giddy to be blessed with the chance to tell each artist what his work meant has to me.
Unless it’s something very clever like ‘Memento,’ most independent films have a very tough life out there.
When you’re traumatized, you pick out one thing you remember more than anything else.
Sundance is the only hand that feeds for women directors.
Do we have to be rail thin to possess ‘outer beauty’ and sex appeal and to be capable of attracting lovers?
Before, I just don’t think we knew how much music was out there; now with MySpace, it’s really opened it up. Filmmakers have so much more choice.
Maybe women sometimes wish that a man would come along and buy them.
I think that with the success of, like, VH1’s ‘Behind The Music’ and stuff like that, the fact that it’s so successful, it’s clear that people are interested in rock lives.
Because I came from the working class, I still identify with them. I don’t identify with the middle class.
When I wanted to become a filmmaker, there was nobody for me to look up to.
I think when I got drawn to film, I didn’t know it was a business. I mean, like most filmmakers, I probably saw more films than a lot of people when I was a kid. But I watched them on TV as well. I was no purist about it. I spent lots of time in movie theaters, but I also watched a lot of films on TV.
The women I cast have to embody all sorts of contradictions… I have to find the right woman to speak to other women.
My work is better, maybe all filmmakers are better, for Polanski’s imprint on cinema. He created language for all of us to use, there is no question about that.
I don’t believe you ever get closure on anything. Things leave a permanent mark on you.
In the early ’90s when the American independent movie started, it held personal vision as a premium. That was brilliant timing.
I’ve been amazed watching people who are not ready with their scripts when they’re getting a lot of attention.
During the ’90s, a lot of us in the indie film world were not making our money off our movies. We were screenwriters doing scripts for hire for studios.
Let’s face it – no matter how independent you are, you still have this nagging need to be desired.
In ‘Honeymoon in Vegas,’ after Nicolas Cage tells his fiancee that he’s given her away to pay for his gambling debts, she gets into a tizzy as if she were a 6-year-old. I couldn’t believe it.
Movies can tell us about our place, or lack of place, in our culture.
It was such a struggle for me to make it off welfare. I was getting $630 a month for myself and my children with no support from their fathers. The rent was $600 a month, and if you got a job, they took it out of your welfare.
I was a single mom.
