Todd Haynes Quotes

But you know, as you say, the original versions of my films are getting out there, slowly.

I've been campaigning like anything for restoring these changes. For 27 years. I wrote a book about it, well, a portion of the book was devoted to these scenes and why they should have been in the movie.

With Technicolor restorations, it's about getting the color right.

As a filmmaker, you complete a film you have spent years obsessively making, and you know the release prints will never look quite the same; prints get scratched and dirty.

I've been on the board of UCLA Film and TV School, and I went to UCLA. I realized that the same movie theater that was there when I went to school, 30 years later is the same movie theater in the same condition. There was an opportunity to refurbish an existing room, and I jumped at the opportunity.

I'm sad to see celluloid go, there's no doubt. But, you know, nitrate went, by the way, in 1971. If you ever saw a nitrate print of a silent film and then saw an acetate print, you'd see a big difference, but nobody remembers anymore. The acetate print is what we have. Maybe. Now it's digital.

My first restoration was on 'Napoleon,' trying to put the French version in with the English version, and it was most unsatisfactory.

1925's 'The Lost World' is... really, everything a dinosaur movie should be. Like a dinosaur, this classic was once extinct too, existing as mere fragmentary footage and stills, but cinemaphile fossil-hunters have painstakingly excavated bits and pieces from obscure archives and assembled them into a nearly-complete animal.

An old building is like a show. You smell the soul of a building. And the building tells you how to redo it.

I decided to restore 'Napoleon' after a widescreen festival at the Odeon Leicester Square in 1968. It was run by Richard Arnell and George Dunning, who animated and directed 'Yellow Submarine,' and they'd got their hands on the last scene, the triptychs. They just showed that part, without music and with the projectors misaligned.

The reason I put so much energy into it at the beginning was that while there were plenty of people looking after the talkies, almost nobody was doing the same for the silents. Now there are plenty of very good historians and restorers.

The advent of DVD/Blu-ray reissues of classic Hollywood and foreign films has been a boon to film buffs, who can now study their favorites in all their glistening detail and restored palettes.

For my own films, I would like to see 'Bullet in the Head' remastered. The original cut was actually almost three hours.

My lifetime dream has been to assemble and preserve the history of the Hollywood film industry.

Once you get a trick on film, it's there forever.

I love my dad and respect him and miss him, but I never hung around my father that much because my dad was a lawyer and engineer, and he really didn't understand what I was about. I was supposed to go to law school at UCLA - I was admitted - and instead of going to law school, I went on the road with a band.

I recently found out that the print of my first film 'Utrada Rathri,' released in 1978, is damaged beyond repair. So the only way to relive earlier films is through books based on the screenplay.

I love silent films. The future is unwritten.

If you imitate someone, you owe them a royalty check. If you emulate them, you don't. There's a big difference. Check your lawyer.

When asked to borrow money: "I'll see what my lawyer says. . . . And if he says yes, I'll get another lawyer.

The studios mostly threw away the negatives of the classic films. They had no interest in their legacy.

The silent film, it was cut at the age of thirty.

I call my lawyer and say, 'Can I ask you two questions?' He says, 'What's the second question?'

Things that came apart could be put together again, but never exactly the same.

Whenever God restores something, He restores it to a place greater than it was before.