Maybe, as a Chinese woman, I was never told I would be a filmmaker, so I didn’t have the ego set up.
I don’t like it when filmmakers say, ‘Just come like this, sir.’ I like to experiment with my makeup. I wish more filmmakers let me do that.
When I was young, my idea was to become a filmmaker.
It’s a new business for me to be a filmmaker.
‘Power Rangers’ is a massive global brand, and we believe that filmmaker Dean Israelite’s singular vision will not only thrill a generation of existing fans but will bring magic to a whole new global audience.
I don’t choose parts. I choose filmmakers. I’m done trying to make a statement with a character. What happens is, I craft a performance from the beginning to the end of the character. Then I release it to the director, and he interprets what I gave him.
I am not a director or a writer, but a filmmaker.
Simply, the majority of the most interesting filmmakers are the ones confronted with difficult situations. Their creativity blows a hole in the wall and lets in the light.
My friend, the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, was murdered in 2004 for having been insufficiently reverent toward Islam.
I’m a filmmaker; I want to make films. I don’t want to sit in a hotel room waiting to make films, and I can control my thing in Denmark; I can make the film I want to make… of course, I have to write a good script, all that, but if I do my job, it will happen.
I’m Irish; I grew up in Ireland, and it’s impossible to separate my background from who I am as a filmmaker.
There are filmmakers who get lucky with the first film itself, and then there are some of us who have to face difficulties.
I realize I am contradictory: I have an independent filmmaker’s sensibility and a Hollywood director’s short-attention span.
I did ‘Red Riding,’ which is TV in the U.K. It became a feature project in North America, but we’re in a great era of TV. We all know that, and we hear it all the time, but for filmmakers, it’s just a godsend to have your television writing and work to do on television, and the means to do it properly.
I want to work with filmmakers who are really smart.
I’m a theater guy and a filmmaker. So when my community was thrown up in the air by the gas industry, the way I could contribute was to do something in the film world. I never thought it would be a big deal at all.
I want to do some bigger films, so long as there’s some sort of exciting creative element or a good filmmaker behind them.
I know many filmmakers, and shooting in IMAX is challenging. Filmmakers love the vividness and power of those big images.
Well it kind of is project to project because as a writer I think you always write to some degree about things that you know or things that happened – but my favourite filmmakers, my favourite movies of theirs tend to be the personal movies.
I’m not trying to prove myself a great filmmaker. I don’t know much about filmmaking anyway. I’m trying my hand at it to see if I’m any good.
When I write music for a film, I’m not writing a solo album, and I’m not writing a personal piece. I’m part of a team of artists. So I think like a filmmaker more than a composer.
I was joking with my mom that all Jewish mothers now will want their kids to be filmmakers instead of doctors. Because you can make one film, and suddenly you’re directing a ‘Jurassic Park’ movie.
I think that if we really want to break it down, that non-black filmmakers have had many, many years and many, many opportunities to tell many, many stories about themselves, and black filmmakers have not had as many years, as many opportunities, as many films to explore the nuances of our reality.
By 14, I had decided on three modest goals and repeated them often to everyone. I wanted to be a world-class filmmaker, CEO of a multi-billion-dollar entertainment company, and president of the United States. I’ve had to settle for journeyman actor.
The worst thing you can do to a filmmaker is to walk out of his film and go, ‘That was a nice movie.’ But if you can cause people to walk out and then argue about the film on the sidewalk… I think we’re all seeking dissension, and we love to affect an audience.
I think that when you’re making a story… that’s based on somebody, the filmmaker has his duty to do his research.
I have no directing ambition whatsoever. And as long as I meet filmmakers like Tom Hooper, Stephen Frears, and others who allow that collaboration, I can’t see why I would ever want to direct.
To me, politics is culture. I became a journalist, and later a filmmaker, to get to know my new country and my volatile place in it as a gay, undocumented Filipino-American.
I’d like to make mistakes on my own dime and not have a herd of people tell me what I’m doing wrong. and I’m also still trying to find and develop my voice as a filmmaker, and I think that’s easier to do on your own terms than trying to satisfy a bunch of people that are paying for the movie.
I consider my job as a screenwriter to pack a script with possibilities and ideas – to create a feast for the filmmaker to pick from.
The most important thing is to have a point of view and have something to say. That is important if you are filmmaker or artist. That means you have to experience the world.
I don’t want to be on a soapbox, but I feel like a lot of documentary filmmakers are part of the ancient tradition of writing down notes, of saying, ‘Hey people, hey people!’
As a filmmaker and film student, I think it’s really interesting to hear what a director did and how they figured out how to do things.
Most filmmakers aren’t very interested in history. They worry constantly that people will be bored.
We saw ‘Swiss Army Man’ and fell in love with the Daniels, who are adventurous filmmakers and radical storytellers, pushing the boundaries.
I love documentaries. My problem is when the filmmaker becomes the star.
As filmmakers, we can show where a person’s mind goes, as opposed to theater, which is more to sit back and watch it.
If I hadn’t met Scorsese, I would never have become a filmmaker. He has taught me everything I know about editing and has given me the best job in the world.
I think that all the talented filmmakers sort of share, I think, a sense of allowing magic to happen; of creating a stable and secure environment for performers to feel they can push to the end of their ability.
I don’t think it’s the job of filmmakers to give anybody answers. I do think, though, that a good film makes you ask questions of yourself as you leave the theatre.
Louis Malle was the best filmmaker I’ve ever worked with. He was such an artist. He was dealing with the theme of innocence and experience.
Many filmmakers portray teenagers as immoral and ignorant, with pursuits that are pretty base… But I haven’t found that to be the case. I listen to kids. I respect them… Some of them are as bright as any of the adults I’ve met.
As a filmmaker, you aspire to want to make movies that can hopefully stand the test of time, but you never know when that will happen or if that will happen.
I’d love for there to be a situation – a world in which that’s just not even a question anymore. We are all filmmakers – different stripes, genders, sexual orientations, colors – and our work can be taken on its own terms. I’m really looking forward to that day.
Movies are not novels, and that’s why, when filmmakers try to adapt novels, particularly long or complex novels, the result is almost always failure. It can’t be done.
The concept of even having fans is still kind of weird to me. I really just feel like a filmmaker that is only just finding my foot in and is beginning to participate in Hollywood and making films. So the idea of any kind of fandom or people that are waiting for something that I may release is very distant in my mind.
For a film to be viable, it has to survive this process of scrutiny. I think most filmmakers have obsessive-compulsive tendencies and would be completely unemployable in any other job – so it’s great to be able to channel your psychological anomalies into something productive and creative.
My biggest inspiration is to work with interesting filmmakers and learn from them in any way that I can.
There’s got to be something you want to tell and that’s the engine which spurs all of the work you have to do in order to create the story, but you have to love some sort of nugget of what you’re telling to be a filmmaker.
There’s a period where you feel very hinky and low about yourself, like, ‘That was a lot of time, and there’s nothing to show for it.’ I’ve tried to tell myself that if you’re going to be a filmmaker, you can’t really talk like that about time, because you’ll hate yourself or feel very worthless.
I feel I’m a hammer to the construction worker that is the filmmaker.
My favorite laser disk ever was the laser disk for The Graduate, which had a commentary track that wasn’t even the filmmakers, it was a professor, some film criticism guy who just happen to be this amazing commentator who went off into the whole theory of comedy.
I can’t make pronouncements about the entirety of Iranian cinema, because there’s such a great number of filmmakers and because of the diversity of points of view and filmmaking attitudes.
Initially, it would bother me when filmmakers, script writers, dialogue writers and choreographers tried to recreate a bit of my dad though me.
