Robert Gottlieb Quotes

Sometimes it feels as if the artist hasn't done the real work of engaging with the material. Film noir can't just play off looks and attitudes. A thriller needs a dose of genuine suspense. It does not have to be literal, but it does have to feel genuine. Otherwise the artist is just leeching off the form.

I think, if you can, it's OK to put something in a movie because it makes you feel good.

I think my films are always quite self-reflexive and always question 'why am I doing this, is this the right way to do it, what is cinema for, does it have a purpose?'

Art is moral passion married to entertainment. Moral passion without entertainment is propaganda, and entertainment without moral passion is television.

People are mistaken to view cinema as some sort of gimmick. It's very much ingrained in the ways in which we understand each other.

I do believe that movies are subject to a million interpretations.

I didn't want people to sit there and watch 10 minutes of film, and all they write about is 48 frames.

No matter how hard I tried to popularize, I never cheapened a great work of art.

I believe in broken, fractured, complicated narratives, but I believe in narratives as a vehicle for truth, not simply as a form of entertainment, though I love entertainment, but also a way of conveying what needs to be conveyed about the works that I care about.

Wrestling is like any form of drama or pretty much any form of entertainment - some people understand this about forms of entertainment really intuitively when they're younger, and others would have to be really not very intelligent for a long time until we realize that every human mood is an art.

Film is built for kinetic movement and crash and burn. It's a great tool for spectacles. But if it's not rooted to something a little higher, you're just kicking your butt around the corner. You can only take so much of that. You have to have some sort of foundation to explode from.

All movies are pure process. A commercial movie isn't less process than an art movie. You can't make your decisions about a film on the basis of, 'Is it important enough? Is it serious enough?' It's either alive or it's not for me. If it's alive, I want to do it.

What interests me about genre is that the public connects immediately with it, it has certain rules, certain codes the audience recognizes. I can use that to create something very big.

There are all kinds of ways that people present their films, but that's kind of a good feeling, if you can make it seem like the characters are really there.

There's a saying in the movie industry that if your movie is about what you actually think it's about, you're in big trouble. I think it's the same with books.

Movies were never an art form, they were entertainment. It just evolved into an art form from there, and it's still evolving in different ways.

You can have ambiguity in television that you are not allowed in film... at least in Hollywood studio films.

All good performance pieces have some philosophical validity. That's the difference between mere theater and performance art.

I've always wanted to do pieces that have an integral sense of realism and aren't just there for titillation.

Cinema is the most important of all the arts for us.

Art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth.

Art is not boosterism, it's not propaganda, and it's not spin, but that's not something that art does, and nor has it historically ever done it.

Movies aren't machines. They interact with our brains.

I can't be part of what is being done in films these days and hence I don't do films anymore.

I don't approach my movies with a target audience in mind. I try to make something that's true to the subject matter as much as possible, while still being entertaining and fun.