Bong Joon-ho Quotes

I wouldn't take a directing job if I didn't think it was enriching life.

I'm not making films just to be bold.

I think ultimately if you have a very high expectation of your audience and you know exactly what it is you're trying to express through the medium of film, there will always be an audience for you.

People think that what I see diving must drive what I put into films, but that isn't really the case. When I am making a Hollywood production, I am telling a different kind of story. Of course, if I see something interesting that works, we will look at it, but they are different things.

A movie is made for an audience and a film is made for both the audience and the film-makers.

As a filmmaker, you have to understand the essence of the book and tell the story you want to see on the screen, and hopefully please yourself - because you can't possibly please everyone.

Look, I'm just a storyteller. When I make a film, I never want the film to become a vehicle of social propaganda.

I just make films that attract me.

I am trying to make the kind of film that I would be happy to see.

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

As a filmmaker, I really want to utilize the tools to carry the voice - my voice, and the voice of the characters.

I think that technological tools that filmmakers use to tell stories, in a perfect world, need to become invisible. When it's brand new and it's never been seen before and you're birthing this stuff, it's very much on people's minds.

I think the only thing filmmakers can do is try to make good movies and make them as long as they allow us to keep making them. But at the end of the day, it is a business, and if audiences don't care, there's nothing we can do. It'll just go away, I guess.

I just want to go on making movies, and some of them will be completely meaningless, except, of course, to me.

You have to realize, making movies is the weirdest thing you could ever do. It's a contrivance, but you're attempting to reach people's hearts in the dark, and there are so many factors that are out of your control.

It's our responsibility as filmmakers to tell a story that's a human drama.

You're always just trying to make your film, tell the story you're trying to tell - best you can, you know.

I was swept by the narrative structure of film... you can create a world, you can destroy it, you can do what you want with it and serve it to people just the way you like.

The excitement of wading into 'reality' and just finding out what happens - and then the challenge of selecting those things that happened and shaping them in the editing into a narrative that will have appeal and be engaging - is a great, great thrill.

I feel like what Director Bong is so amazing at is taking so many things and presenting them to you - never telling you how to think, but, if you leave the theater thinking something, we've done our jobs right.

I don't want to do a history lesson. I don't think cinema should be about that. Cinema should be about emotions.

We filmmakers are control freaks. For us, it's about bending the elements of a story into existence.

What I want to impart on any movie I work on is I want to make it entertaining. That's what I feel I do.

My position was that the film begins with the first frame and that the film should be doing a job at that point.

Every film is a human encounter. It's people trying to collaborate and create something together.