Jason Reitman Quotes

It is important to consider that the horror movies should - like modern art - not have a too obvious meaning. When you watch them, it is more important what you feel than what you understand.

The audience likes their emotions to be touched. They want to laugh and cry and feel good.

I focus on the elements of a movie that are meant to invisibly affect me as a viewer. The edges. As an author, I'm aware of how the subconscious things can pluck at a reader's emotions, and I love it when filmmakers do the same.

I have a very awesome seat in the house every time I play. When the lights come up, and the sound turns on, I'm playing for a roomful of human beings. And geographical and political borders just all dissolve. And we unite through rhythm inhalation. I mean, I'm so grateful that, you know, audiences around the world connect to English music.

Emotionally, light very much influences, I feel, the audience. It's not something that most audience members are conscious of, which is a good thing, because it means as filmmakers, we have the opportunity to gently control an audience into feeling a certain way.

The living experience of film only happens when a film is seen, and only within the spectator, because they project their own fears, desires, and fantasies upon those lights and shadows.

It's interesting, for me sappy means sentimental and something that gets you in your heart, gets you emotional. That's what I mean. Also, of course, it means that I'm slightly setting up the audience that there's a bit of fun involved, as well.

These Songs are not meant to be understood, you understand. They are only meant to terrify & comfort.

The public is composed of numerous groups whose cry to us writers is: 'Comfort me.' 'Amuse me.' 'Touch my sympathies.' 'Make me sad.' 'Make me dream.' 'Make me laugh.' 'Make me shiver.' 'Make me weep.' 'Make me think.'

My drawings inspire, and are not to be defined. They place us, as does music, in the ambiguous realm of the undetermined.

I still want to get some empathy from the audience, even though she's pathetic.

When I was working with Stanley Kubrick [on "Eyes Wide Shut"], he would always say, "You never tell the audience what to feel. Let them choose to have their responses."

Humor is the easiest to achieve; the 'heart' is always the toughest, because you can't tell people to feel a certain way.

If you put anger in the writing, then it's like an actor crying on stage. The audience will not cry with the actor and in some way inure itself against the emotion.

The movie itself was very interesting, but I didn't think it was very good because I didn't really feel different when it was over.

If you give a meaning to certain things in my paintings it may be very true, but it is not my idea to give this meaning. What ideas and conclusions you have got I obtained too, but instinctively, unconsciously. I make the painting for the painting. I paint the objects for what they are.

I don't like movies that are too manipulative. A lot of movies thrive on really pushing your buttons and making you hate the villain.

Take it from me: If you hear the past speaking to you, feel it tugging up your back and runing its fingers up your spine, the best thing to do-the only thing-is run.

Poetry has no investment in anything besides openness. It's not arguing a point. It's creating an environment.

If I have ideas, I want to put them in the movie. It's not a minimalist approach at all but I feel like it's for the audience. It's about seeing how much texture we can give it and seeing how many things are there for people to latch on to... I just want to do it the way I want and I feel like it won't be helpful for me if I start worrying about that. I just have to follow my instincts. Everyone is going to respond differently to it and everybody's right - that's their point of view. That's how the story intersects with their lives.

With pornography, if you don't get hard or wet, depending on your gender, it didn't work. With humour, if you don't laugh it didn't work. And with horror, if you don't get scared or haunted, depending on what it's trying to do, it didn't work. I'm fascinated by those three categories.

There are no personal revelations other than feelings arising from the work itself

Everyone is influenced by everybody but you bring it down home the way you feel it.

Music's golden tongue Flatter'd to tears this aged man and poor.

Make (the reader) think the evil, make him think it for himself, and you are released from weak specifications. My values are positively all blanks, save so far as an excited horror, a promoted pity, a created expertness... proceed to read into them more or less fantastic figures.