Top 80 Edgar Wright Quotes

My favorite film of all time is ‘Raising Arizona.’ I watched it again as soon as it was over. I had it on VHS, rented it, and I watched it and said, ‘I want to watch that again, right now.’ I think I did the same with something like ‘Goodfellas,’ which is a completely different genre.

I had a chance to do ‘Ant-Man’ in 2011.

Not everybody fantasizes about robbing a bank, but I think most people have that fantasy of being in a high speed chase.

Comics have years to explain this stuff, and in a movie, you have to focus on one thing. So it’s about kind of streamlining, I think. Some of the most successful origin films actually have a narrower focus.

I’ve always been fascinated by horror films and genre films. And horror films harbored a fascination for me and always have been something I’ve wanted to watch and wanted to make.

‘Scott Pilgrim’ is something that was a little bit more difficult to put in one box. But, to me, that’s not necessarily a bad thing about the movie.

When I was at school, I used to end every school day with fountain pen ink all over my hands and face and down my shirt.

I think the premise of somebody trying to recreate a night from their teenage years stuck with me as something potentially very tragically comic.

I’m very happy with my life and career, but I do find myself having serious attacks of nostalgia, and I don’t quite know why. Even though I’ve got to travel the world and do amazing things, I still want to go back to my teenage years and change little aspects of it. It’s strange, but it does continue to bug me.

Sometimes, some things have to settle, and you have to think about the intention of it.

I love the Zucker brothers’ films – ‘Airplane!,’ ‘Top Secret’ and ‘Police Squad!’ – are my formative experiences.

When you’re struggling to get a feature film off the ground, there’s no big overarching tenure plan or anything like that.

Tony Scott, Walter Hill, Michael Mann – I’m a big action fan, full stop. And even though Michael Mann is the more celebrated film-maker than Tony Scott, I love them both in different ways.

Television was essentially my college.

When you write something, at first you might feel very defensive and protective of every single thing, but after a while, you just see what works and what doesn’t. Sometimes you do test screenings, and an audience tells you that, or sometimes you eventually just go, ‘Let’s cut the joke out.’

We need to make more original movies, and audiences would do well to support original movies for the future of the medium.

I like watching films that can play in any language because they’re essentially silent.

All of my films have been very dialogue-heavy, and that’s great. It always makes it more of a challenge to market in other countries.

If you have ever driven around London and seen the amount of one way systems… they basically rubbed out all car chase crime. In fact, if you get bank robberies in the U.K., they’re using scooters.

I like watching films that can play in any language because they’re essentially silent.

By the time I got to Bournemouth Art College, I’d been so inspired by Sam Raimi and Robert Rodriguez and their tiny, no-budget films that I decided to do a feature-length version of ‘Fistful Of Fingers.’

There are lots of films I wish stopped at installment number one. I like ‘Back to the Future Part II’ and ‘Part III’ enough, but I still like the ending of the first one better.

I would say ‘American Werewolf in London’ is like an unconventional buddy movie: even if the buddy dies 20 minutes in, he still remains throughout the picture, and their partnership is one of the best things in the movie.

I think you write the film that you want to see, and you try and do it honestly, and you can’t control people’s responses, really.

When I was at school, I used to end every school day with fountain pen ink all over my hands and face and down my shirt.

When I went to college, I discovered the Sega console, and ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ became very dear to me.

Whenever I’m writing a script, I’m scoring myself by playing the right kind of music.

The man-child in American comedies is always glorified; they never really show the darker side.

I was at art school that had quite a celebrated film course as well. I tried for that film course when I was 18, but they said I was too young. I tried this audio and visual design course instead. Two years later, I reapplied for that higher course, but they said I was still too young and to try in five years.

I have this theory about science fiction movies in that, when the space race sort of died, a lot of people sort of lost hope.

You cannot put 50 years of the Marvel universe into a movie. It’s impossible.

I am always watching old films and trying to fill gaps in my knowledge.

Tony Scott, Walter Hill, Michael Mann – I’m a big action fan, full stop. And even though Michael Mann is the more celebrated film-maker than Tony Scott, I love them both in different ways.

I loved the idea of somebody literally fighting for love.

Every time I watch a Clint Eastwood film, I’m in touch with my feminine side, I’ve developed a searing man-crush on Clint Eastwood.

‘Don’t Look Now’ is a masterpiece. I think it’s the best-edited movie of all time. I adore it.

Some people are brilliant on the first take, some people are brilliant on the fourth take, and when you are doing a group scene, you kind of have to figure that out.

I remember seeing ‘Gremlins’ and having my mind blown and seeing ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’ at 13, and it was this hugely aspirational experience.

I was never a DC kid – I went through a phase from, like, 11 to 17 where I would try to buy as many Marvel titles as possible. And ‘2000 AD’ was kind of the sort of sci-fi/punk of British comics.

When you’re doing a car chase movie, you’re sitting in car waiting for places or grips or stuff for quite a while.

Wes Anderson deserves an award for sheer persistence of vision.

I think, ‘Scott Pilgrim,’ it was something where the general audience didn’t necessarily understand straight away what it was.

For 120 minutes, ‘Birdman’ floats from comedy to surrealism to high drama to quiet brilliance. I felt so inspired by watching this movie. It reaches for the sky and never comes back down to earth.

I grew up on ‘Battle of the Planets.’

Maybe directors who are more interested in realism and naturalism come from cities, where they see things on their doorstep every day. But growing up as a kid in a very pretty but ever-so-slightly boring town, where not a great deal happened, encouraged me to be more escapist, more imaginative, and more of a daydreamer.

I definitely went through a period when I was a teenager when every girl was ‘The One’ and every break-up was the ‘Worst Thing That Had Ever Happened.’

A lot of recent comic book adaptations have gone two ways: either they’re striving for some kind of realism, like ‘Iron Man’ or ‘The Dark Knight,’ or they’re very stylised and gritty, like ‘Sin City’ and ‘300.’

Television was essentially my college.

Wes Anderson deserves an award for sheer persistence of vision.

If you ever watch police chases on, like, helicopter cams, they very quickly become nightmarish when you start to see the police coming in from the edge of the frame. I always find that terrifying.

There have been recorded cases of people learning how to fly a plane after playing a flight simulator, but there’s never been a case of someone learning to fight by playing ‘Tekken.’

Occasionally, you’ll get a ‘District 9,’ a film that is politically charged, but there is nothing going on beneath the surface with a lot of horror films. They are not about anything.

I’m a big believer in keeping the stage directions really tight.

Whenever I’m writing a script, I’m scoring myself by playing the right kind of music.

Some people are brilliant on the first take, some people are brilliant on the fourth take, and when you are doing a group scene, you kind of have to figure that out.

I think where the criticism of videogames come from is where videogames are just Xeroxes of films, and when you get a film adaptation of that game, you’ve just Xeroxed something twice. I think that’s where a lot of the criticism comes from – there are ultra-violent games that are already based on a million films.

I am always watching old films and trying to fill gaps in my knowledge.

We got offers to make sequels to both ‘Shaun of the Dead’ and ‘Hot Fuzz,’ and they never really interested us because we like having these endings where it seems very final but could hint at some kind of future adventure that you’ll never see.

It’s a very rare and fortunate position to be able to make movies with two of your best friends who happen to be really amazing actors and writers.

I was never a DC kid – I went through a phase from, like, 11 to 17 where I would try to buy as many Marvel titles as possible. And ‘2000 AD’ was kind of the sort of sci-fi/punk of British comics.

For 120 minutes, ‘Birdman’ floats from comedy to surrealism to high drama to quiet brilliance. I felt so inspired by watching this movie. It reaches for the sky and never comes back down to earth.

Sometimes, some things have to settle, and you have to think about the intention of it.