David Pratt Quotes

I've been to several international film festivals, including those in Locarno, Switzerland; Dubai; Russia; Berlin; Cannes; Bangkok; and Hong Kong.

I'd like to do one European film a year.

I made 'Siam Sunset.' In Australia, it was pretty much universally hated, but I did notice that almost any American who saw it loved that film, so in 2001 I made a film in America called 'Swimfan,' and they released like a big studio movie, and it made money.

Hollywood exists only for the B-movies. The best things are coming from Europe.

When I started acting, there were parts in English that I thought I just had to try it out and go to another country. I did a film in Ireland. It was my first film abroad.

I'm from Australia, where the film industry is potent but small.

For British cinema to survive, you really need a British film culture, and it's got to start down there, with young kids watching films in the cinema - so they can be transported to a different world.

It's funny because I remember when I came to the U.S. with 'Swimming Pool,' the movie did well, and it was great box office for a French movie, but I remember I was a bit upset because all people talked to me about was the nudity.

I find the stuff that is exciting to me are the films coming out of Taiwan and Iran and France. So I have the feeling I'm not making the films that American distributors want to make.

The BAFTAs give the British point of view, and the Oscars give the American point of view, but the truth is we're all working in an international industry.

There's guys like me who aren't going to the theater, so distributors are leaving money on the table.

There's so many films from around the world, I emphasize, that are so beautifully photographed, but they don't get the recognition.

I think, for an actor, the whole world is a place of work because if you focus on characters and on stories, they are everywhere, so yeah, I feel very privileged to have had this great opportunities in the international cinema and especially in the American cinema.

I first visited the Toronto fest in 1979, its fourth edition, when it was known as the Festival of Festivals and had an audience of about 40,000. I happily returned to the 10-day skein nearly every year thereafter, as attendance swelled to 400,000 and it grew into the most influential film festival in North America, perhaps the world.

If you look at other countries, you'll find lots of girls doing physics, engineering, and science. It's something to do with the kind of culture we have in the English-speaking world about what's appropriate for each of the two sexes.

Shiraz' is an important part of our filmmaking and cultural history.

It is a big thing to work in a foreign film.

I am busy with other language films apart from Sandalwood.

Film directors don't come to the theatre in Sydney. In London and New York, they do.

Imagine, there is almost no possibility for a foreign language film to be distributed in America right now. That doesn't just make the industry poorer, it makes the landscape of cinema poorer, in America. The impossibility to get a good release on a really good European, Latin American, Asian movie is a tragedy.

I think Hollywood has gone in a disastrous path. It's terrible. The years of cinema that were great were the '30s, '40s, not so much the '50s...but then the foreign films took over and it was a great age of cinema as American directors were influenced by them and that fueled the '50s and '60s and '70s.

It's obviously a lot more of a political undertaking making a movie in Hollywood and it's a business there. In Australia, they don't expect films to make money; whereas in America they're counting on it.

Film is universal. All the countries of the world are making films. Hollywood is the only major unsubsidized center for films. To my knowledge all others are at least partially subsidized. I'm glad Hollywood isn't.

Everybody's been decrying the death of movie theaters for decades and, you know, people are still going to the movies in droves. It's gone down, but it hasn't gone down that much. I think the biggest change has been the emergence of cable and streaming on television. That has really had a dramatic effect, and I think it's a positive one. I think there's really good work going on there, and as movies stratify to being these gigantic tentpole movies, and small movies, I think it gives another outlet for character-driven material.

In New York I'd go to the movies three or four times a week. Here I've upped it to six or seven, mainly because I'm too lazy to do anything else. Fortunately, going to the movies seems to suddenly qualify as an intellectual accomplishment, on a par with reading a book or devoting time to serious thought. It's not that the movies have gotten any more strenuous, it's just that a lot of people are as lazy as I am, and together we've agreed to lower the bar.