Zal Batmanglij Quotes

I was really affected by 'The Piano.' Had I not seen that movie, I wouldn't have gone to film school.

I came to Los Angeles in the fall of 1969 to study at the AFI.

I went to NYU undergrad, then went to AFI for grad school.

A lot of the guys that work for Warners and make these big films there all come from the same film school. Like Michael Bay, Zack Snyder, Tarsem Singh - they all went to Art Center in the College of Design. And there's a certain expectation when these guys graduate.

I think a lot of guys are influenced by 'Pinata.' I fathered a lot of styles off that album.

I went to Columbia film school; that's where I met Matthew Weisman. We then became writing partners, graduated, and moved out to Los Angeles. I didn't know a soul.

The great artists are those who impose their personal vision upon humanity.

I love films from all these different points of views that used the idea of the school as a way to talk about the American experience. It took me a while to figure how to write a movie like that, because that's not something you learn at film school

I just remember saying to myself that I'd much rather do movies than modeling, and that it was worth a try. I didn't really know anything about it. I hadn't seen many movies, or so-called, good movies. When I was a kid, I was obsessed with Star Wars and Night of the Living Dead. When I got more curious about the movies, I thought they were something you had to learn about and go to school for and read every book.

[I want to be] Something that really touched you - and as far as image and change goes, I just really want a lot of people to respect my music and treat me... [as] inspiration.

I don't know if it's really important, or intelligent even, when people say to me I'm a white Spike Lee, because they said to Spike Lee you're a black Woody Allen.

That's what great art does - it inspires other artists to do great art, and that's what it should do.

I run my own film school, the Rogue Film School, and I do it over three and a half days, eight hours non-stop everyday; alone, single-handedly. But the difference is in the Rogue Film School I do have real human beings in front of me from all over the world, and of course there's this course as well, they can ask, talk about their problems and obstacles, finances, anything, you just name it. Whereas in the Masterclass, you are speaking to cameras.

The best and only thing that one artist can do for another is to serve as an example and an inspiration.

My filmmaking education consisted of finding out what filmmakers I liked were watching, then seeing those films. I learned the technical stuff from books and magazines, and with the new technology you can watch entire movies accompanied by audio commentary from the director. You can learn more from John Sturges' audio track on the 'Bad Day at Black Rock' laserdisc than you can in 20 years of film school. Film school is a complete con, because the information is there if you want it.

They (the poets) are to us in a manner the fathers and authors of the wisdom.

The quality of our lives is diminished every time we lose a great artist.

NY is the city it is today in part because of the contributions from generations of artistic visionaries

Artists who are relevant today won't be tomorrow unless someone does the right thing by their character and preserves it in the dialogue of a movie.

A king or a prince becomes by accident a part of history. A poet or an artist becomes by nature and necessity a part of universal humanity.

Artists die twice. First creatively. Then physically. The second one is the easiest.

More important than a work of art itself is what it will sow. Art can die, a painting can disappear. What counts is the seed.

I'm not at all sure that the concept of the readymade isn't the most important single idea to come out of my work.

I'm a living example of getting into films backwards. Merely by accident. Exposure to films and ideas is the best thing that colleges can do.

It's a kind of honour when I see how many people are imitating the style of how I make films.