Todd Solondz Quotes

I feel like success to me is about feeling like I have done something in storytelling, where I've gotten close to articulating something intangible that I'm feeling, and I think I get closer every time, but I don't know that I've done that yet.

I don't think people understand what it takes to make a movie unless they've experienced it themselves or been around it. It's a miracle every time you make a movie, and a bigger miracle if it turns out well.

It was kind of intimidating to make a feature without that much experience.

I love having made a movie.

I'll go on making films until I make one that pleases me from the first to the last frame. Then I'll quit.

So I don't think being an artist you can ever satisfy - the moment you do get satisfied is the moment you're done, really. I'm actually starting to bug out now, because it's not enough. I get joy and pleasure in the movies out there in the world that people are seeing, but for me, it's about making it. That's why I do it, is to make it, to deal with my life.

Basically, you make another movie, and another, and hopefully you feel good about every picture you make. And you say, 'My name is on that. I did that. It's OK.' But don't get me wrong, I still get excited by it all. That, I hope, will never disappear.

I wasn't trained as a writer-director. And the projects I write are difficult to finish.

I make more movies than I see.

More often than not, the experience of shooting the movie has been disappointing and the end product has been a mere shadow of what I hoped it would be. But immersing myself in the story - that's what I like best of all.

I love being on set, because I've basically grown up on a set. And now I love to contribute as a director and help steer the ship, if you will.

I've been directing more and more the last few years, I find it an enjoyable challenge.

You want to enjoy making a movie - it's a wonderful, collaborative thing.

It's always been a lie that it's difficult to make films.

Well, I think every film student goes into film school thinking they want to write and direct their own movies, and they don't realize how much goes into it, and what a process it is.

I'd come into filmmaking as a painter so, for me, making 'Good Will Hunting' was experimental because I didn't know how to do it.

My favorite film is always the one that I most recently worked on.

Once you've made your first feature, you know what you can do wrong and how hard it is to shoot a feature. Before you do it, you just don't know how hard it is. Once you've done it, when you're writing a second one, it's almost like you're preparing, and it's almost holding you back.

The experience of making a movie is far removed from watching the end result. It's exciting, but it still makes me squirm.

I know nothing about making a movie.

I hope to direct at some point, but I don't feel the pressure to rush it. I want to really know what it is that I'm doing.

I had been trying to make movies, but they were really hard to get made. TV wound up, by surprise, a much more fulfilling place to work. That said, I've always been drawn to make movies.

People don't talk about how hard it is to make a movie. Nobody does. Ever.

When I did 'Gilbert Grape,' Lasse Hallstrom let me be on the set with him and in the editing room and in the casting sessions and so on. And so I got a firsthand, rather intimate, high-pressure look at how to make a film.

In many ways, shooting my first feature was more difficult than I had thought it would be, but it was still the most rewarding experience I have ever had.