Steven Shainberg Quotes

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

When a film like Chris Nolan's Memento cannot get picked up, to me independent film is over. It's dead.

Indie movies got co-opted by the studio system. The studios insisted that only stars could make movies successful.

When you watch a film like 'Warning,' you would realize that it can't be made with stars.

No studio picks up the phone after seeing 'Dogtooth' and goes, like, 'We have the next superhero movie.' Though if one did, that would be an interesting studio to work with.

My good films were independent and my bad films were not.

I really don't consider myself to be a conventional Hollywood star. I've never really been marketed by the big studios to do mass market box office films.

The only difference from one $100 million budget film to another is which of the 12 box stars are getting $20 million to be in it.

If you are the kind of guy who draws in 100 million people to see his film, you've got every right to be paid accordingly, but I qualify as a character actor. I don't put a bum on a seat.

Ultimately, making movies, if you don't have a big star, it's hard to do. Or if it's not a star director.

I love indie movies. I think that independent cinema is where it's at and where a lot of trends begin. It's where new filmmakers are breaking through.

Miramax can buy a small independent movie that isn't very good, but because it has great relationships with different theaters, it can get into a big theater.

It's kind of hard to work with Tom Cruise and not be aware that you're working with one of the biggest movie stars in the world.

If you have a career like mine, which is so identified with Hollywood, with big studios and stars, you wonder if maybe you shouldn't go off and do what the world thinks of as more personal films with lesser-known people. But I think I've fooled everybody. I've made personal films all along. I just made them in another form.

There's a big difference between the independent film world and the Hollywood film world, and I don't know that I understood that until I got into certain rooms, and people's faces go blank when you talk about Sundance.

I love commercial cinema.

Films make stars and stars never make films.

The success of 'Kick' will help in the marketing of other small budget independent films I have acted in.

You need stars to create the buzz and bring audiences to the cinemas.

Euthanasia is legal in Hollywood. They just kill the film if it doesn't succeed immediately.

Well cult is a word you would never say in Hollywood. In any film business, if you're trying to get your next film made, you would never say, "Oh, my last film was a cult film." I'd say, "Oh great, well I hope this one isn't!"

I mean, obviously it's exciting for me to see what 'The Revenant' is doing in the box office. That's very exciting.

I would love to work with the great movie actors of our time.

Before I made 'Sweetback,' I had a three-picture deal with Columbia and enough juice, if I was real clever with it, to proclaim that I wanted to do an independent film.

Small films, made on shoe-string budget work in big centres, and for that a substantial amount of budget should be set aside for marketing.