Ira Sachs Quotes

The films that are coming out of SXSW are incredible, and they should get the same bids that films at Sundance are getting.

If you really spend time with movies, it's three years of your life from beginning to end. I started out planting the seed with 'Monster's Ball' about independent cinema and raising money and that whole thing as a producer, and then it becomes easier for me.

There's a big difference between the independent film world and the Hollywood film world, and I don't know that I understood that until I got into certain rooms, and people's faces go blank when you talk about Sundance.

When I went to Sundance back in 1998, indie film was all the rage, and Miramax was throwing down five or six million dollars for several films each year. Those were the salad days of indie film, and those days are over. I'm not out there worrying too much about it.

I consider myself an independent filmmaker.

In the early '90s when the American independent movie started, it held personal vision as a premium. That was brilliant timing.

Independent film is not only an oxymoron; it doesn't exist anymore.

You know, the people who do indie film and decide who gets those little budgets? They're mean, man. They're cold and very cool-oriented.

'Five Easy Pieces,' 'Easy Rider' - those are indie pictures; those were not studio pictures. They had relationships with studio distribution, but they were indies.

I love independent filmmaking. I don't agree with a lot of it, but that's the point.

I always wanted to go to Sundance.

I was making a lot of independent movies before the independent movement.

The traditional Hollywood system is pretty rigid, but the film scene in, say, South Africa is booming with a lot of possibilities. If you have the cameras and reasonable capital, you can put your film in theatres next to 'Guardians of the Galaxy.' A great example of that was Kagiso Lediga's film 'Blitz Patrole.'

Most of my work has been independent movies outside the mainstream system.

My dream is just to make zero-budget movies for the rest of my life, because I love that environment.

I met Jill Soloway at Sundance a couple years ago. I was there for 'Crystal Fairy', and she was there for 'Afternoon Delight'. She reached out and wanted to get together.

David Michôd changed my life, quite literally, along with the chaps at Sony Pictures Classics. That's what set me on my way. I thought we did good work and had a good film, but when it was so praised at Sundance that year that's what really started the ball rolling. We all paid our own way to Sundance.

In the States it's more and more difficult to get an independent film off the ground, and you certainly wont get the opportunity to play something like that in a studio movie.

My good films were independent and my bad films were not.

It's just hard to get an independent film made.

I went to film school, worked as an assistant, and wrote several scripts that haven't gotten made.

I write box notes for Kino International, which specializes in distributing foreign films.

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

Being part of 'Natural Nylon' is a great way to have an influence on the films that get out there. I love films and it gives me an input.

Hollywood exists only for the B-movies. The best things are coming from Europe.