Paul W. S. Anderson Quotes

I got to learn what does and doesn't work on screen. Because the turnaround is so fast, there's no messing around. You have to be on the ball.

You can act in five, six, or seven films in the time it takes to direct one film.

Films are done in about three months, and television takes up about ten months out of the year working on the same project.

I feel like I don't have much of a preference. With TV, it's just a longer process, so you need to be more sure that you really want to be involved in it for a longer time than you would be with film.

I learned about making films by going into advertising, making commercials.

The trouble is, the older you get, it's hard to find time to make a film: it's a year to write, a year to get money, a year to make it, a year to edit. It's four years of your life.

It seems like movies normally take a long time to get made. When you focus on it, and you're waiting for something, it seems to take longer.

Eleven years is a great length of time to prepare a movie, it would be wonderful to have 11 years of funded preparation.

I've worked in the movie business for many, many years, where you have lots of days and lots of money. It's really mainly about time. We always try to conceive all of our action from a place of, "What can we shoot that looks fantastic?," rather than trying to do the kinds of thing that you would be able to accomplish in a movie.

Pre-production and post-production is something that I've never been exposed to. I was pleasantly surprised that you could accomplish a lot during pre-production.

I think the sheer hell of trying to get a film made; I don't know if it would ultimately be worth it. The sort of format that I have, these TV things, sit somewhere between documentaries and reality shows and entertainment shows and dramas.

You can't make two films at the same time.

I don't have much patience as I really like to work a lot and it is really hard to work a lot in movies because you have to have patience - every movie is a huge test of patience.

Apart from my film, I am producing TV serials and plan to make more films, too. Mine is not going to be one-film-a-year production company as such.

Now I do perhaps three films or 17 TV movies a year.

At least in films you will go, you shoot for four to five months and then you can take a break. But I know how TV works… the directors are mindblowing, they work non-stop.

You know, if the filmmakers were satisfied with the film they just made, they could jump right in and make another one, instead of lingering on the last one.

As an actor, I give 60 days to act in a film, but the writer takes nearly two to three years to create a story.

A lot of independent films try to pull off a 14-day shooting schedule, which I think is ridiculous. No matter how big or small you are, it really kills whatever sort of time you get to allow the actors to find their characters, and to spend time to think about what they're doing.

I made experimental commercials in the experimental division of a production house, Film X, that made commercials for ad agencies.

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

I've seen animation features just languish until the right combination of things come along to keep it alive.

You have more time to work in movies. My experience with movies is that you have more time to experiment with the character and camera angles and things like that.

Directing takes a lot longer than acting. This was about seven years in development, and then two and a half years with pre-production, production, post and now the release. Not that I have people banging on my door to star in movies, but it takes me out of the acting game for a longer chunk of time.

Well, this movie I've been working on for a while. I had the idea for the movie like twenty years ago when I was doing 'Empire of the Sun' in 1987 because at that time that's when all these Vietnam movies were being made and my friends and I were going on auditions for these Vietnam movies and my friends were getting them and going away to fake boot camps.