Ellen Page Quotes

I believe that independent film making is the last frontier of creative expression available. So I'm always willing to lend a helping hand to a young film maker who's just getting into the business.

I think I might like to try film again just as an experiment, but I know that I could never do the mainstream thing again.

The only person who has artistic control is the director, and 'director' is how you spell God in Hollywood.

The reason I took on directing a film myself was because, no matter how skilful a director was or how much I liked the film, there'd always be beats where I'd go, 'Oh... well, that's skilful, in a way, but it doesn't get the flavour I'd intended in the script.'

I love independent film so much, and that's kind of where I made my mark.

I love Brian De Palma.

The quality of mainstream cinema has changed. A lot of independent voices feel they can leave everything behind and make independent films.

A lot of more modern films seem to just be out for violence or sex or what have you, without relating it to what's going within human beings. But every now and then one comes along that does that, and it's a joy.

I don't like to be entertaining. I don't like the feeling of being entertaining. If there was a musical or a comedy that was not just for entertainment but was rooted in something I could relate to on a real level, then I think I would do it.

The movies that are made more thoughtfully or made or with more ambition often get just get drowned out by the noise.

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

I do not make movies to send any message, but my treatment makes my viewers think on the subject.

I don't believe that art is just for entertainment. I want to create art that is meaningful in some way.

You gain and lose different things in different mediums or different sectors of different mediums. There are liberties you get on tiny indie films in terms of not having to be designed toward a marketing demographic.

There is often a great disparity between a director's personal style and the movies he makes.

So many features at Sundance seemed to be powered more on the director's need to be a director than any particular story.

When you boil it down, most movies are message movies. And I think careers are made in message movies.

I mean, there'll always be room for big productions and everything but it's good to see the other side.

I admire James Franco. I admire somebody like Jack Nicholson. Anyone who just does movies for the sake of making movies and takes big risks.

One quality that a director needs to acquire in Hollywood is to understand the system and figure out how to work within the system to express one's own ideas.

To me, I approach a small-budget, artsy, European movie the same way as a big commercial Hollywood movie. That's the most important thing. Hollywood usually represents this big dream in people's minds, but to me, it's just hard work.

'Frances Ha' is the closest final product to what I had in my head of any movie I've made. I'm not entirely even sure why that is.

Studios never put pressure. They know the kind of films I want to make.

Going forward, I would love to work with directors like Rian Johnson and Joss Whedon; people like that who are doing big films but do have really independent voices. That's kind of what I want to focus on, is always working with people with at least an independent point of view, even if it's not an independent film.

I definitely think independent film is very exciting, and you get to sometimes take bigger risks. So that's always a challenge and something that I look forward to.