Walter Hill Quotes

I haven't read a review of one of my films for the best part of 10 years.

I kind of don't like doing film commentaries because I think they're kind of weird.

In the dear dead days beyond recall, when I was in my prime as a film critic, the industry was booming. Hollywood, to give them their due, always called it the industry, through quite a few imagined it as an art form and went through several hours regularly at tiresome films in the sacred cause of art.

Rotten Tomatoes is the best thing that happened to the movie business because it means you have to make good movies.

I look at films every day. I study. I coach.

I'm one of those directors who read reviews, even if they're bad, because I started as a film critic as a cinema student. I indulge in the art of criticism in general.

I liked writing, and I loved movies, obsessively loved movies, but I had never made the leap of thinking I would actually come out here and write stuff.

I think what you have to do is have a box office success in every genre and then you're set for life. And fortunately, I happened to do that, so I get a myriad of offers of various sorts.

Film has become such a central part of our culture now that I think sometimes too great a weight is placed upon it in terms of scrutiny and analysis. There's a lot of rather specious professorial stuff that swirls around films.

I think any actor that says 'I never watch my films' is a liar because you have to watch it at least once and also you're going to watch it when you're doing your ADR.

Sure, you could go out and make Jaws today. But all of the sequels to Jaws weren't good. They are all worthless. The Godfather II is the only sequel that I have ever seen that is as good as or better than the original.

I don't read the reviews because they're too horrible and the reviewers have not been big supporters of mine over the years, probably because I make these big populist movies and they hate it.

I think every filmmaker wants... I don't know about every filmmaker. I certainly want my films to just exist. I want them to be judged for what they are and analyzed, accepted, criticized, whatever you want to call it, on their own terms, not as part of some mall-cop genre.

I mean, there's obviously only one Leo [DiCaprio] but I look at guys like Mark Wahlberg and Tom Cruise and think I'd like to have that type of career... that would be really great if I could have that.

It's interesting because First Wives Club was the first movie that made a shitload of money that starred all women over a certain age. That was a milestone that made you think, "Oh, things are going to change."

I am not the most annoying person to bring to a movie 'cause I basically hold it in and write about it later or tweet about it. The most annoying people to bring to movies, I think we all agree, are those who read the book first.

It makes you feel good when a movie works. Usually when I see an old movie I've made, I say to myself, 'Oh God, why did I do this?' and 'Why didn't I change that?' and things like that.

I don't believe that Citizen Kane or Gone With the Wind, or any damn picture that you can name, would be better off in 3D. I think it's a gimmick. I find 3D distracting.

I was kind of embarrassed by some of the films I had done. I was like, "Oh, they're going to think I don't have street cred."

... the English think of an opinion as something which a decent person, if he has the misfortune to have one, does all he can to hide.

In thinking about 'depressing movies,' many people don't realize that all bad movies are depressing, and no good movies are.

I'm a cinephile. I love movies, I love film at every level. I'm a student of it. It informs me as does all art in my music, because there's stories, there's acts, there's moods, there's dynamics, there's moodiness, emotion. All of those things that play into a film. I think that could equally be said about music. It definitely informs me. Beats is stories.

Every time that I'm challenged with a film I think that I haven't learned anything, that every film is different and that every thing that I have learned is useless in this new adventure.

There are real issues going on in just about any movie that's got fun elements to it.

There are a lot of celebrities that I think can get a little bit distracted by the way that our society views celebrity. All of a sudden, the film becomes about, "Come see this celebrity!" I'm not interested in that. I want to see a story.