Rajiv Menon Quotes

I don't want to do a history lesson. I don't think cinema should be about that. Cinema should be about emotions.

A lot of the struggle I had with movies is I really loved moments and tones and feelings in a scene, and I loved creating those, but I never really had great stories to string them together.

What I've realized is that a film operates both on the intellectual and emotional levels, and if you can find a way to tell a riveting story and draw ideas out of that, it's very powerful.

I'm not a big fan of there being voiceovers in movies. I really prefer it when the film tells it story.

When I shoot a film, I take my camera and put it among the characters and let it show you their world, their problems, their happiness and the little things that matter to them.

My goal is to always try to make you feel something, whether that's humor or sadness or excitement, and to try to manipulate screen space.

I think I can speak with a degree of authority... today, the biggest driving force of movies is pace; God help you if you try to put in a scene that is about character and not plot.

My interpretation of a strong director is someone who knows their story. That's what directors are, they're storytellers because they're directing where your focus is going to be as an audience.

I usually don't find myself reacting to my characters. I just create them ... And let the audience decide whether they're empathetic or scared or compelled to cheer me on.

I'm not a purist - I like films that are narrated and films that aren't, films that are beautiful and films that are clumsy but heartfelt. Mostly, I just like a good story and good characters.

You can be a smarty-pants director, but that won't matter if the movie doesn't work emotionally as well as intellectually.

The audience has to understand that if the film is going to have any meaning for them. If they are going to empathize with the characters, they have to visualize the process of concentration involved in making every move.

For me, with me, making a film is always about humanity.

I know the movies that I've liked, and I know the experience that they've given me, so the goal is always to try to create a movie that I would like myself and that would knock me out, challenge me or intrigue me in some way. That's been my criteria for figuring out what I want to do, or also when I'm writing something or creating a scene.

In the end, drama is successful if you care about the people.

As an actor, you don't really have a say or a voice in what the conversation of the show is going to be. So, as an actor, I'm just trying to make sense of why the character is making these choices, and somehow, in that way, you can sympathize or root, at least not detest, what this person is doing. That's, at least, my job in telling that story.

I got the 'Max Rose' script, and I fell in love with it. It just hit me. It was something that needed to be made.

I don't really make movies with an intention other than asking myself, 'Do I love the character, and do I love the story?'

I think really good drama comes down to real human emotion. That's what makes us all tick, and that's what I've always been drawn to when it comes to scripts is real human emotion and dealing with that.

It's our responsibility as filmmakers to tell a story that's a human drama.

Storytelling is powerful; film particularly. We can know a lot of things intellectually, but humans really live on storytelling. Primarily with ourselves; we're all stories of our own narrative.

It's much better to write a book and stick to the research - that's history. In cinema, emotional truth and psychological truth is much more important.

For me, the first thing is script. When I heard 'Mom''s script, it really touched me and moved me. I felt really nice about the story. That's the reason I did the movie.

Dialogues and emotion based movies don't always work.

I don't make movies to make a point; I make movies to tell stories about people.