Todd Haynes Quotes

When you're an artist, all you're trying to do is self-express.

I want to be able to go wherever I want to go, do whatever I want to do. I guard the material and the filmmaker.

Hollywood's a mecca, but it's not the final answer. You pick up a camera anyplace in the world, you can make a movie.

I think the idea of art kills creativity.

I always want to do something I haven't done before and get to work with other actors, writers, or directors that I want to work with.

But short films are not inferior, just different. I think the short gives a freedom to film-makers. What's appealing is that you don't have as much responsibility for storytelling and plot. They can be more like a portrait, or a poem.

I have a freedom that's incredibly valuable. Obviously my freedom is far smaller in scale than people like Zemeckis and Spielberg have here. But it's comparable. I can dream up a project, develop it, make it, control it, release it.

Writing is a form of licensed madness.

I never intended to become a commercial filmmaker in the first place. What I do requires time and experimentation. Commercial work is often not the best way to get the most innovative work, because it's about money and marketing. Although advertising is now embracing non-commercial people.

People gave us everything for free. We were allowed only so much film per picture, but there was no limit to the creativity. I like to say that they let us loose like wild dogs in the streets of Paris.

I began taking liberties a long time ago; now it is standard practice for most directors to ignore the rules.

I don't make films to reproduce reality.

You're always in a box, and you're an escape artist if you do what I do - or if you're a creative person, period. You build your box, and then you escape from it. You build another one, and you escape from it. That's ongoing.

For me, the key is years of the blessed filmmakers I've worked with giving me permission to be bold and jump off cliffs and to be boundaryless. I would put David Lynch at the top of that list.

For me, each film, each script is like a little journey in itself, and I'm reinventing the wheel. It's like, 'How do I make this film?' That's part of the pleasure, and that's why I'm not a normal professional director.

Making a movie really frees up the way you think.

Filmmaking is like any kind of art form. You have to try to figure it out, and you're going to do that by trying.

The web offers a creative climate that filmmakers have been craving for.

Cinema is a creative medium. The director has the right to express.

As a film-maker, it's only natural to feel happy about new possibilities opening up.

I love working with different artist with different styles and different producers with different sounds, creativity is everything.

You can assist another director and learn the ropes of the craft over the years, but becoming a director is about finding your own voice, so you've got to experiment.

I love being with artists because I'm always open to getting into something.

When I did my first film, I had a fair idea of what I liked and what I didn't while watching an actor in front of the camera. After I finished the film, I thought I had exhausted everything I knew. As I moved from one story, setting and character to another, I discovered something new.

I was free always. I could work without the money, to film this and that. But this is another point, because now I'm alone, and I can just use it when I want. I think the digital cameras have changed my view. Even though sometimes, including the installations that I show, I mix 35mm filming and video handmade.