Martin Scorsese Quotes

To make a film is easy; to make a good film is war. To make a very good film is a miracle.

Normally, if you're lucky, the idea of a film you have in your head is more or less what you get back when you see it after the editing and the whole post-production process.

Everybody is always trying to make the best movie they can. It's a process.

There's some things that you learn as you're shooting, and as you're editing that are key, because when you start you don't have the brain that can finish it. You don't really know what it is, and that's the key job; figuring out what you actually have, not what you're dreaming of having.

Making a movie is a network of decisions that keep multiplying as you go. You leave a trail of decisions behind you, and that's how you start to see the shape of what you've done. When you get far enough, you turn around and say, 'Ha, that's the movie.' It's only then that you find out if it's going to work or not.

I love making movies, I love trying to make them as good as I can, but I feel like sometimes the marketing and publicity around the movie, becomes the most important part of it.

I genuinely try to make movies I'd want to go and see, movies that are a bit more challenging.

Once I'm in the editing room, forget about what I intended to shoot. I take a cold, hard look at what I really did shoot, and then I edit that because, if you try to edit what you intended and you missed somewhere, that will show up.

You know, usually with movies there are periods, dark areas, where I might not be getting what I wanted out of a theme. I'll have to go over and over it again.

A movie goes from several stages, from idea to script. As you continue shooting, you will make some adjustments. You're constantly adjusting. It's like a piece of music. You're constantly trying to make it better.

As a director, you try to find what is creative.

Of course any kind of film process has ups and downs and days where you're stuck and have breakthroughs.

The whole process of making movies and writing screenplays is visceral and intuitive.

When you think of a movie, most people imagine a two hour finished, polished product. But to get to that two hour product, it can take hundreds or thousands of people many months of full time work.

With directing, you've got to find something and drag it up from its inception, and I'm at the early stages of doing that again. There's something all-consuming and addictive about that.

Film, for me, has been a process of learning on the job.

I'm anxious to make another film.

Making a film is beyond exciting. It's so exciting, it's exhausting.

I don't think people understand what it takes to make a movie unless they've experienced it themselves or been around it. It's a miracle every time you make a movie, and a bigger miracle if it turns out well.

Directing is creating a whole. You're able to combine different elements and create a film that is unique and true to your vision.

There are many aspects to directing that have a romantic place in people's minds.

I don't make movies because I love to act. I make movies because I like to make movies, and I like to be a part of that process.

You can't start a movie by having the attitude that the script is finished, because if you think the script is finished, your movie is finished before the first day of shooting.

I like making movies.

I've never made any film that I wouldn't go back and re-edit.