Lenny Abrahamson Quotes

Just because you've made a couple movies, you've done some good movies, you've been nominated for some Academy Awards, whatever, nobody's entitled. It's a business. If they don't see it, I can think they're wrong, but I'm not entitled to a $15 million budget to make a film.

When I came out to Hollywood, I discovered the perfect place for my creative madness - Cannon Pictures.

Hollywood is a town; it's not a medium. And cinema is a medium you can practice anywhere.

I think in Europe, movies are made like a commodity and then sold as art.

Films are hard to make and I think the word indulge really leads one to believe that it's an easy sort of business and it's really extremely difficult.

Everybody is always trying to make the best movie they can. It's a process.

I thought that making movies was drab. I'd lived through that. And I didn't want to use my parents, ever... They didn't want to push me into this business.

I must say, to my great surprise and pleasure, I deeply loved making movies in the United States because of all the opportunities it gave me to work with people that I admire as artists.

I think you get in trouble if you make experimental big studio films.

I'm not particularly interested in working with movie stars. It depends on where you come from, I suppose. Why are you making films? The reason I want make films is because they convey ideas. I think some directors make films because they want to hang out with movie stars and be part of Hollywood. They want to be a star themselves.

I don't really want to be doing high budget, where they've got cranes and everything. That just sounds boring, having to do the same thing over and over again.

I don't think any studio - it was a long shot at the time - but I don't think any studio in a million years would make 'Thelma and Louise' right now. But there's so many other kinds of movies they won't make right now.

When you make a movie, you can only make the movie that you would want to see.

I admire James Franco. I admire somebody like Jack Nicholson. Anyone who just does movies for the sake of making movies and takes big risks.

One quality that a director needs to acquire in Hollywood is to understand the system and figure out how to work within the system to express one's own ideas.

I worked with Steven Spielberg on Amistad... he seemed so very secure in himself that he let me do things.

I don't want all of American cinema to be big cartoons that are just made to be digested by the entire world.

Studios never put pressure. They know the kind of films I want to make.

I want to make my own movie.

Woody Allen would go for seven years without a movie and then make one that makes no money.

It's a good time to be making movies, despite the cynicism people have about Hollywood.

I did my first film with Francis Ford Copploa, which spoiled the hell out of me.

I want to act for the rest of my life - and I also want to pursue directing. Watching Bill Condon direct 'Twilight' kind of made me think, 'OK yeah, I really want to do this now.' This idea that you can make an image in your head and be in full control of how it comes out - I thought that was really cool.

Acting is a community where you come in and out of each other's lives. I'm slightly envious of the Golden Age of Hollywood. It must have been frustrating to be owned by the studio, but it was also like being in a company, working with the same people, and that appeals to me.

There is no guaranteed formula. And that's one of the interesting things about filmmaking. You could put $115 million in, and it doesn't guarantee success.