Henry Fonda Quotes

You take some creative license when you make a movie, and things can be a little bit different.

Oh, filmmakers, please don't take my soft book and turn it into a horror, or take my horror and make it soft.

With a film, you try to keep your vision in it. I think with 'The American' and 'Control' I managed to do that.

Polar' is based on the first and a little bit on the second book and all the characters from those novels are in there. The story is based on the graphic novel, but when it came to the execution of the film I felt I couldn't really make a movie without any dialogue.

I think comics can be the basis for great films, but I think the focus of such a project should be on making the film as good as possible, not on painstakingly replicating the comic.

A movie is not a book. If the source material is a book, you cannot be too respectful of the book. All you owe to the book is the spirit.

I'd like to think that my films are personal enough to exist without hearkening back to their respective novels.

You either ignore the comic book and make a great movie or you stay very close to the comic book.

I think you should make movies as long as the story dictates.

Any adaptation - and I've done three in my career. I did 'Sweeney Todd' and 'Hugo' and 'Coriolanus.' It's important to find what makes it a movie as opposed to just a film presentation of a stage play.

Making a movie and not directing the little moments is like drinking a soda and leaving the little slurp puddle for someone else.

I love directing scenes that I'm not in because suddenly I really feel like a filmmaker which is a different thing.

Once you're directing, you're kind of in a certain mode, where you're taking whatever is on the page and forming it into the film that you think it might want to be. So whether it's my writing or not, I still try to work with it in the same way.

All I can say is that I am not one of those writers who want 100% of their book in the film. I recognize that film is a different medium and the filmmaker must have the right to bring some new elements to the table, provided the soul of the book is preserved.

I watched a lot of silent directors who were absolutely great like John Ford and Fritz Lang, Tod Browning, and also some very modern directors like The Coen Brothers. The directors take the freedom within their own movies to be melodramatic or funny when they chose to be. They do whatever they want and they don't care about the genre.

I'm also a huge cinephile, and I have witnessed that to honor the book literally word-for-word never makes a good movie.

There's no doubt that some of the greatest films ever made have come from the theater. It's all a matter of finding a way to make the theater experience watchable on film.

No two directors make the same film the same way.

I always write these movies that are far too big for any paying customer to sit down and watch from beginning to end, and so I always have this big novel that I have to adapt into a movie as I go.

A film adaptation is, I hope, the director's version. A new creation.

I think we shouldn't be shy of thinking that we can interpret text like a movie again, depending on the point of view and what we do with it more than anything else. Of course a lot of remakes of important films, particularly of horror films, they suck.

Spike Lee is a master of tone, so basically, if he wants to do something, he should do it, and Imma listen.

I'm always making movies for my audiences, but I'm not trying to meet their expectations.

I don't make movies. I don't feel that I have to have artistic control. Part of this comes from the fact that the book lives on no matter what Hollywood does to your novel in terms of a film. Now, you try to be careful who you allow to do your film because nobody wants their novel to become a turkey movie. But, on the other hand, it is a crapshot anyway, because even the best people can make a bad film.

Make movies that you want to go and watch in a theatre.