David Heyman Quotes

I know when I watch a film at this point, if I completely lose myself in the characters and the story and the world of the film I know that it's at least in my opinion, that was great. Otherwise I'm thinking: "Oh I know they were just doing A, B and C, right before they walked into the scene, then the camera was there, then they probably took the shot from this reverse close-up and moved it into this." When all of that drops away then I'm like: "Okay this was phenomenal, this was fantastic." I mean, any film or TV performance in general is probably good.

I like a drama. And I think that's the basis of good films, or good plays, is to have a nice drama.

When I was young I used to sit in the cinema thinking wouldn't it be great if you could have a film in which the characters were like real people instead of being like actors.

In the last ten years of watching films I have found that some of the foreign films I saw affected me most. One American film that stands out for me for its workmanship and artistry is 'Ratatouille.' It was an astonishing effort in filmmaking.

When I was given the opportunity to direct 'Senna,' I decided the film had to work for audiences who disliked sport or had never seen a Formula One race in their lives. It had to thrill and emotionally engage people who had never heard of Ayrton Senna.

You can sustain visual beauty and innovative visual ideas for a certain length of time, but in a two-hour experience, which is really what movies are, usually audiences - whether they know it or not - most want an emotional connection to character.

I mean the cool thing about the movies is that you get to try on these different personalities and different styles.

I think that those are the things that you can uniquely do with film that are difficult to do anywhere else: they can bring a picture to life, give it a natural and historical context and make you feel that everything else is suddenly credible.

A film engages you emotionally and intellectually.

I was always in love with film and becoming a character and playing something else, and nobody ever told me no, so I just followed it, and here I am, having a ton of fun.

My favorite films are the ones that I walk away from and I know I saw a story.

When art in general, and film in particular, succeeds is when it pulls you away onto a voyage. Then it's a good film.

I prefer drama; I think character-driven drama is my favorite kind of stuff to go watch, and I like being challenged by that kind of stuff in that way.

At the end of the day, I just want a movie that's great, that people are going to love and laugh at and be affected by, and also have an emotional journey.

When I saw 'Talk to Her' for the first time, I was crying out loud because I couldn't imagine that I was doing that film.

Priyadarshan makes good films because he is a good writer.

I don't make movies to make a point; I make movies to tell stories about people.

Cry Baby is a character so I think that the next album is going to be about a specific thing in her life or another place in her world. It's going to be a bit deeper into a bigger picture.

I don't really think in terms of genre, I think in terms of story and character.

I've made movies on every part of the spectrum, and you do understand when you go into certain movies that you're trying to elicit a certain kind of response from the audience, and people get a real sense of satisfaction when they're rooting for a character and the character pulls it off.

I had tears coming out of my eyes. And it was the characters that got me there.

Everything we do is about the emotion of the characters. We believe the better the emotion, the better the movie.

I think, in fact, there's a plus and a minus to knowing my prior work, Happiness and so forth. The plus is of course you can see how I play with the characters, the storylines, and the way things play off each other. And the minus is that it makes you a little bit more self-conscious, that you're not able to enter the movie as it exists and lives and breathes, because you're so busy making references, connections that you're not able to release yourself from and take the film on your own terms.

We in Illumination Entertainment tend not to put ideas through a brand funnel. We've collected a group of people who share a certain taste, and that is connected to our aspirations for our brand. We pride ourselves on making character-centric movies. If I had to say what's the most important thing this company does, it's creating characters that stay with the audience long after they leave the theater.

I'm a character-driven director, and I tend to fall in love with the characters in my movies and TV shows.