James L. Brooks Quotes

For me the most moving moment came when I first started working on 2001. I was already in awe of him, and he had very much already become Stanley Kubrick by the time the film started.

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

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

To me, directing movies is just that. It's a need to question myself and set the things that disturb me on the table.

I would never make a film because I think it's going to be a box-office success.

You do a film and you have hopes for it, and you read it, and you see it one way in your head, and you shoot it, and it'll always change from what you started out. Sometimes it turns out better, sometimes it turns out; I don't know, but as movies go I've never experienced seeing and likening what I've read, and I liked what I read.

I like to say that films are never finished, they're only abandoned.

I know the pleasure you get from making your films. The intense involvement in every aspect: the acting, the camera, the colors, the costumes, even the hair and makeup. Editing is thrilling. Everything to do with films is absorbing - everything but the money part, the business. But I'm deeply glad I've had that experience.

When you're making a movie, you can't think anybody will ever see it. You've just got to make a movie for the values it has. The greatest films were made because someone really wanted to make them. And, hopefully, the audience will show up, too.

A great movie evolves when everybody has the same vision in their heads.

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.

When I make a picture, I make love.

I never thought of what I was doing as a way to sell the NFL. I was making movies about a sport that I loved, about players and coaches that I respected. I wanted to convey my love of the game through film. And most artists convey their love through art. And my art and my love was expressed through film.

Making movies was a real weird kind of adult experience. In a way it was like MIT, in that it was a great education. The big lesson is, people are people. They're smart, funny, creative people, but they're people.

Every movie has its uniqueness. You just do your best and go with it.

Films are not mathematics - that's the first thing you need to understand. At least, that's how I feel. They are not words on paper. Films are made with people, with teams and with individual bundles of creativity coming together to fulfill the vision of an individual who is the director of the film.

I'm not prejudiced about what type of movies I'm in, what form they take or whether they're studio or independent. I just want to make films that are going to be good.

With directing, you've got to find something and drag it up from its inception, and I'm at the early stages of doing that again. There's something all-consuming and addictive about that.

Films are amazing. To be a part of a movie is the greatest. It's so historic and exciting.

You have to find something that you have to obsess over if you're making a movie about it. As a director, you have to be able to pick something that excites you enough that you can breathe it every day.

I have an intense obsession with making films. I not only love to make films, I perhaps need to make films.

For a film to be viable, it has to survive this process of scrutiny. I think most filmmakers have obsessive-compulsive tendencies and would be completely unemployable in any other job - so it's great to be able to channel your psychological anomalies into something productive and creative.

I never want to make a film. I don't wake up in the morning going, 'Ooh, I'd really love to be on set making a film today'. I'm aware that other contemporary film directors perceive film-making as what they do, as what they have to do. But I would hope that I am more catholic in my tastes.

Film, as far as I'm concerned, is my area of artistic endeavor, so I never think of a movie that gets released as being all done-it's just when they took it away from you.

Every time you work, it's a new film, and generally when you work with auteurs, people that write and direct their films, there's always an originality.