Dalton Trumbo Quotes

In my day, the only people who achieved real independence were my father, Mary Pickford and Charles Chaplin, who, with D. W. Griffith, formed United Artists. Other than that, everybody belonged to the big studios. They had no say in their own careers.

The system is not really particularly amenable to filmmakers who write and direct their own work. It's much more about the studio already having a property that has a marketable concept and then hiring the director on board.

I don't think the idea of working in Hollywood really exists anymore. I think you work in films, and where the film is shot is where it's shot. The studio system doesn't really exist.

It's nice when you're working in Hollywood and there's a movie you'd like to see that no one is making anymore. You make it yourself.

I'm not interested in making a $60-million studio film with a bunch of 24-year-olds telling me what to do.

If I make a movie in English, the money will come from Europe, so that I can keep my independence and freedom. The way they produce in Hollywood doesn't fit me.

My dream as a teenager was to run a movie studio, as in the old studio system.

I'll still make movies for studios, but my editing process will be much further removed from the studio system. Because I don't understand it. I don't understand the whole testing-numbers thing. It is not how I want to make movies. So if that's how they do it, then I don't think I want to do it.

The Hollywood structure was monopolistic, run by four or five big studios.

If you think of movie studio executives, say, as society, then I root for the independent producers.

The major studios don't differ very much from one another as they all operate under essentially the same principles and pressure.

In America, I don't think you have the creative freedom that I'm used to. Traditionally, it's a producer's cinema here.

I've always been an independent producer. I'd kind of like to be hired help for a change. I don't mind that.

I've always said that to make movies, to make images and sound, is possible by one way or another. And it has not to be ruled by the Pharaohs of Egypt, the Pharaohs from Hollywood or wherever. I have tried very hard to make even a small budget picture here. It always fails. Over a dozen times. And now I know why. It was only because I wanted to be in control of the money. To spend it the way I wanted.

One of the things you have to understand with The Room, I never approached a studio to produce, because I know no one in Hollywood will produce this. I came to Hollywood and I said "I will produce this movie the way I want it."

I wanted to be more hands on. Otherwise, every time you finish acting in a movie you have to almost go and beg people for the next job, whereas if you have the chance to create and produce your next movie that keeps you busier, it gives you more options and hopefully enables you to make the type of movies you're passionate about.

Sometimes it's hard for me to tell the difference between independent filmmaking and studio filmmaking because all the studios have these little independent satellites. It's interesting.

Hollywood is a showman's paradise. But showmen make nothing; they exploit what someone else has made. The publisher and the play producer are showmen too; but they exploit what is already made. The showmen of Hollywood control the making - and thereby degrade it. For the basic art of motion pictures is the screenplay; it is fundamental, without it there is nothing. Everything derives from the screenplay, and most of that which derives is an applied skill which, however adept, is artistically not in the same class with the creation of a screenplay.

You cannot make a living doing independent films.

It is difficult to make movies on your own terms and also to make a film and convince somebody to have faith in it.

I was in a very lucky position to be able to consider studio films and had decided to not go that route for a very long time until I read a script that I loved called 'Aeon Flux.'

My strongest message is: 'Never give your songs away. Never sign a contract you can't get out of.'

If you sell the film rights to your book, it doesn't mean there will be a film. I have sold the rights to five books and had zero films made. Take the money and be thankful.

Life in the movie business is like the beginning of a new love affair: it's full of surprises, and you're constantly getting f***ed.

The main problem is that the Hollywood system has already made the film before the director shoots a single frame.