Christopher Nolan Quotes

I think with the smaller-scale projects, the burden for success falls more squarely on the shoulders of the actors and the director and the script.

I'd love to see the rushes but it's just not allowed because directors and also a lot of actors feel that if they see their work, and the director likes what they're doing, the actor might try to correct their mistakes.

But at the same time, never having final cut before, I really learned an interesting thing for any studio executive who is reading this: that if a director has final cut, it's actually easier and more interesting to listen to notes.

Making a movie is difficult enough to sort of have a premeditated length that you're going for. I don't know a single filmmaker on the planet who does that.

For the most part, studio movies have huge budgets. They don't do anything under 30 to 40 million. When you have that much money at stake, you have so many people breathing down your neck.

I don't make movies because I think audiences will want to go see them.

I've always worked very efficiently on small budgets, both in documentaries and in features.

With a film, you try to keep your vision in it. I think with 'The American' and 'Control' I managed to do that.

On Belle de Jour, the producer was very protective. It was very hard for me.

As a director, my job is to spend money, and the producer's is to save money. Masoom, Bandit Queen and the first Queen Elizabeth have been my most uncompromised films.

I didn't need the insurance. I do it again if my DP tells me it didn't look good in the camera or if the actors didn't hit their marks. But if everything was working why do it again?

Look, I've done some low-budget movies and I've done some big-budget movies, and the big-budget movies were always kind of disorganized.

But it's true, it's nothing new that decisions about what movies are to be made, and how they're to be made, and who's to be hired to do what, and whether you hire somebody to do their job, or whether you hire somebody to fill a position and you tell them what to do.

The majority of the time, we try to hire the best people that we can get just to make the best films, and I think that's something that Pure Flix has been known for the movies we produce on the budgets that we do... our production values have elevated this genre.

As a producer, I learned not to declare anything about a movie I'm not directing.

The first time I did a big American film, I was surprised by all the different financiers who came to the set and told the director what to do.

I do have a responsibility, but I would make the most boring films in the world if I woke up every morning worrying about my social responsibility.

You want to give the person as much freedom as you can within the boundaries of being a responsible producer with a contract to a studio. It's about giving as much freedom as you can, and the more the filmmaker proves he or she is on the track that you feel good about, then you just kind of watch dailies.

You can do 12 great takes, but if the director is no good, he'll end up picking the wrong one.

If you can get your movie made the way you want to get it made, no matter what the end result is going to be, if people are going to see it, that's awesome.

I think that, again, filmmaking is the director's medium in the end, and the best thing a producer can do is stay out of the way and support the director one hundred percent.

I don't like it when filmmakers say, 'Just come like this, sir.' I like to experiment with my makeup. I wish more filmmakers let me do that.

You see, I believe a producer's job today is as important as that of a director.

If your financiers care about the movie, they will be involved in a very constructive fashion, but it can get out of hand very quickly, and that is something to be aware of in any type of filmmaking.

I don't get to make many features. It's not like that's something I can just snap my fingers and make happen.