Irvin Kershner Quotes

I'd just as soon do a big-budget movie as an independent one.

It's nice when you're working in Hollywood and there's a movie you'd like to see that no one is making anymore. You make it yourself.

I moved to L.A. to write and direct. I had no intentions of being in front of the camera.

Actually, I went from doing a lot of movies early on in my career, then to doing TV, and I don't know whether we'll get back to some movies or not.

There are really only a handful of directors who have a final cut clause in Hollywood. You only get that power if you've made a couple of hundred-million-dollar successes.

'Carrie' was a pretty big-budget movie at a real studio, with a director that had already done a bunch of things and had some notoriety, and Stephen King was the writer.

If you know the filmmaker is good and the leading actor is a movie star like Diane Lane, you know you're part of something great.

I began to think, now is the time. I found quite a lot of opposition in Hollywood about the idea of doing a film musical and we ended up having to buy the rights back. I'm glad we did because it meant John and I were able to make exactly the movie we wanted.

'Independence Day,' ever since we did it, there's been enormous pressure to follow it up.

I don't want to be in 'Expendables 5.' You can keep those kind of movies.

I would jump at the chance to work with the inordinately-talented J.J. Abrams on a new 'Star Trek' film.

I do believe that there are some films that cannot be made without stars.

Maybe at 55, I would like to direct. I will go the Angelina Jolie way.

I was doing 'Twin Peaks,' and Columbia called and said they wanted me to do 'Gladiator.' I thought it had the potential to be a real commercial film, so I was like a kid in a candy store.

The first film is very important, and one needs to choose the right kind of debut project. I also think the second film is equally important, as it needs to be a notch higher.

I remember when James Wan and I did the first 'Saw' movie, a lot of people would say to us, 'Well, you left the door open for a sequel.' And we would say, 'No, we literally closed the door!' We thought it was a nice ending. Little did we know that the producers had other ideas once the film was a hit.

I've seen it happen with other directors. Sometimes there's a period where, if they're lucky, they get the financing where they can make two films in a year.

My fourth movie, 'PKP2,' is my biggest release and biggest success.

Being a part of memorable movies has always been the goal.

It's a real honor to have my stories up on the big silver screen, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. It's great fun flying out to L.A. for premieres and meeting all the actors and directors.

As soon as I finished film school I was thinking about, how do I get to feature films? It took about eight years, and I'm still working. Feature films was not the end goal. Feature films was one of the stages. Getting to the point of the Coen brothers or Tarantino, where you're writing your own material and have the budget to do it properly, that's the end goal, and I'm close to that.

I was in a very lucky position to be able to consider studio films and had decided to not go that route for a very long time until I read a script that I loved called 'Aeon Flux.'

Think about Medusa, with the snakes. If you shoot a movie in Europe, the financiers are three snakes, and they all have opinions. In Hollywood there are, like, 20 snakes.

I had an interest in film, but I didn't want to go to Hollywood and make movies.

Everyone out here in Los Angeles is trying to do whatever to break into films. It is a tough industry to get into, kind of like pro wrestling in a lot of respects when you think about it.