John Cassavetes Quotes

It's dangerous to think too much about how a film will be received. Filmmaking is not a popularity contest. Some would disagree.

When I started out in independent films in the early '70s, we did everything for the love of art. It wasn't about money and stardom. That was what we were reacting against. You'd die before you'd be bought.

Anyone who thinks Peter Jackson would fall for market forces around him rather than artistic integrity doesn't know the guy or the body of his work.

I'm not someone who has to make a film at any cost. I have to find the right way to make it or not at all.

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

Hopefully, you'll be able to find enough of an audience, each time, that you can keep working, rather than getting caught up in the Hollywood system, which can so quickly become about how much money something makes and how many people went to watch it. It's very alluring. It's such a powerful machine that's playing on you, the whole time.

My responsibility is to make a film and find my dramatic language; I don't have any political or social responsibility.

My goal is just to make movies, whether they're big or small, that I'd like to see 10 years from now.

I honestly think I could sit down and write a show tonight that the critics would love, and I know it would be canceled within four weeks. I know what the critics love. We write and produce for people, not for critics.

To make independent films, you can't think about them too much, ponder on them too much, get overwhelmed by the enormity of it.

The independent-minded movies - it's always an uphill battle to get them made and seen. You do what you can, and go out there after and try to tell people about it, but at the end of the day, that's all you can do.

The dean of the American Film Institute has written that I'm one of the very few auteurs in America. I've had freedom for 40 years to create art that is totally personal and is what I believe in.

I am not ready to fit into the mould of commercial cinema.

Other people have worked with big studios and maintained control over their movies. I see no reason why it wouldn't work for me.

You do small movies because the script is good and because you believe in the director. You don't care about the money. And when they disappear, it's a pity.

I don't like directing that much to want a career as a director for hire. I like to have as much creative control as possible.

My goal was, and still is, to write first, direct my own stuff whenever possible and control my own creative destiny.

I don't need anybody to market or promote me. If people don't want to hear this music, then it's not for them. You cannot please everybody.

One thing I know is that I don't want to be a director for hire, making genre films.

I don't read critics, and I don't care what they say. You can't let them steal your soul. You do what the director and production is committed to doing. I just think it's terrible that critics have the power to keep people away from a good production.

The one thing I'm proud of as a filmmaker is that people are entitled not to like my films - that's the privilege of the public - but I think I have my own imprint.

I do believe very much in movie as a one-man-show. I think that where I've watched movie go wrong, it's usually because the dread committee has been interfering with it.

I make movies for me and posterity. I'm more scared of history than I am of the studio.

As a director, you never think about how an audience would respond. You can think about that, but you will never change what you're going to do.

Since childhood, I'd dreamed of making a film, but producers in France and Germany wanted to make commercial films with chinoiserie. I refused.