Justin Chadwick Quotes

When I finished performing 'I Won't Give Up' for the first time, I opened my eyes, and I think there was maybe six people in there when I started, and when I finished there was about 30 people, all standing around with their jaws dropped in complete silence. I said, 'Okay, I think this song has some power to it.' So coffee shops work for me.

'Do the Right Thing' has been a big influence on me. I saw it when it first came out in 1989. I was about 18, and it blew me away on many levels - I had never seen anything like it before.

The first time you watch a movie that you like, all of the magic works on you. It's an experience of having a world unfold in front of you. But if you watch it again, you start to see where the seams are.

When I watch a movie for the first few times I'm usually thinking about where I was in a given scene, who was next to me, what we were doing etc. But after I've gotten through all of this, when I'm really watching the film itself, then I get moved.

'The Conversation' was a movie I saw probably for the first time in the early 2000s. I immediately loved the piano and just how simple it is.

I was so besotted with '8½' that, when it was on TV, I used to take pictures with my 35-mm. camera of the frames of the film. That was the first time I'd ever really seen Italians on screen.

I know there are people, if I go into a market or a city for the first time, there are people that are there that just want to see the famous person, or the guy from 'Dumb and Dumber' or whatever movie they liked. And that's fine, it gets them in the door, but then it's my job to give them something different.

For me, there is nothing more valuable than how people feel in a movie theater about a movie.

I always say to anybody who's going over to America for the first time, 'Whatever you do, go and see a popular mainstream film with a big audience.' Because people shout out. You never get that in Britain. Everybody's so quiet, scared to laugh. It's like being in church.

Your relationship to a film, and to cinema, is very much determined by yourself, so what is relevant is you.

I just saw the movie for the first time in its entirely last night. It's really cool when you're in with an audience that's so tuned in and plugged in to what's going on.

You have to pay attention to the moments when you've felt on top on the world. I remember the first time I was on stage, I was doing 'West Side Story,' I was 17 and this woman was crying because she liked what I was doing so much.

Showing 'Get Out' to a room full of strangers and having them react lets them be introspective and see the way certain images affect other people.

I've also shot plenty of films with very small audiences - 'The Sun Also Rises.' I love that film, but I didn't capture the imagination of the audience. I don't know why.

I love the movies. Everyone always says the same thing about the shared cultural experience, seeing things on the big screen, the church of the cinema... But on top of all that, as a filmmaker, I love having people be trapped in a movie theater, forcing them to watch what I made.

The films that have influenced me most are: 'The Hustler', 'Badlands', 'Hud', 'Tender Mercies', 'Cool Hand Luke', 'A Perfect World', and 'Laurence of Arabia'. I also really like 'Fletch'. I feel like all of these films reached an honest place in regard to the human condition while also stringing together really entertaining stories.

I don't think it's right to define films as commercial or art house. What's important is that a film evokes a certain emotion when it's being watched.

My main goal as an actor, with my craft or whatever poncy way you want to say it, is to always take the audience with me. To make them feel for me, or to make them hate me, I want a reaction. I want their emotions. The worst reaction someone can have is, "eh."

The fact that audiences have come away moved, excited, entertained and stimulated by the film is extraordinarily flattering.

Theater, at the end of the day, is about ideas. It's about very large ideas. And if the play is beautifully written or smartly written and has incredible characters you follow on the journey, you take home these larger ideas. Whether it's 'Angels in America' or 'Lucky Guy' or 'Normal Heart,' you follow this moment-to-moment journey as an audience.

While I feel it's important for films to examine our society, I don't particularly like watching the films that do it.

For film fans to support 'The Imitation Game' means so much to me, the entire cast and film-making team.

In a strange way, we go to a play to be entertained, but if there is any kind of identification, we either reaffirm our beliefs, or we change.

I'd love to write more observational comedy but the stuff people seem to respond to is the most personal so it's snowballed from there.

I make movies to be watched the way I want to watch them, and I want to watch them in movie theatres.