Whit Stillman Quotes

After 'Maryada Ramanna,' I wanted to make a quick film on a shoestring budget.

Most film teams usually come with a tight deadline, which doesn't leave us much time to compose.

I always, as a firm rule, make my movies based on how inexpensively I can make them because that means the more freedom I'm going to have.

We didn’t want to disrupt the creative process. We have the chance to make the films we want because the films are not expensive. It’s very rare to be able to do that. It’s completely pure.

When you're starting out, you know, you have to do something on a very limited budget. You're not going to be able to have great actors, and you're most likely not going to have a great script.

Occasionally I'll be a producer for hire on a larger budget movie, but with Blumhouse Pictures, we mainly focus on micro-budget, under-$5-million-dollar movies. That's what we're in business to do, and that's what we're in business to make.

My mother gave me this book called Feature Films at Used Car Prices by a guy named Rick Schmidt. I gotta credit the guy, cuz he gave me the most practical advice. It empowers you.

Definition of an independent film is torture with less money and time.

The film, even when we were making it in that budget range, which was really a coup - we got it made because we pitched it to the studio head, Joe Roth.

When you're shooting super-low-budget - we had 20 days to shoot 'Diary,' and a little over $2 - time is money.

I want to have the illegitimate child of independent film making and the budget to make it. That's my aspiration.

Well, the whole trick to doing an independent film, is to keep great pace and momentum. You're shooting maybe three times as many scenes in one day that you would on a big, luxurious budget on a luxurious schedule, and you try not to sacrifice quality for that. Things are just compressed, but essentially the same.

I need very little to work, because I learned how to make movies on tiny movies. It's all kind of easy for me.

I think the reason I like making movies sometimes more than doing TV is that you have one task, you only have a certain amount of time to do it, and then it is done. And I really like focusing in that way.

Any asshole can make a good movie for $100 million. I think it's way harder to make a movie with no money, and to start with no contacts and work your way up to international productions.

With 'Honeymoon,' it was so intimate, and we literally shot it in something like 20, 24 days. Everything was very rapid and very fast, and so all of us submerged into the deep end and only really came up for air once we had wrapped.

I ended up getting to do a lot of student films - no budget: somebody just wrangled up a camera and went to shoot stuff - and it was fun. It was great.

I produce more movies than I write, but when I write, it is such an immersive, intense process that it probably takes as much or more time than producing multiple movies.

When you have three days to work on a scene, you can give all that love to the movie.

You can just start shooting things and see how it goes. But time is still money, so you have to know when you are finished. It's not like painting a picture which you could go on refining for 20 years - with a film you have to stop at some point, and that is no bad thing.

You can't make two films at the same time.

The 'Damsels' crew was low-budget, young people who were doing their first thing almost. A lot of it. It felt like Pied Piper or Rumpelstiltskin or whatever: it was me and people thirty years younger or more. But it was great; it was really fun.

I wanted to complete 'Maryada Ramanna' in a short time, but it took me almost a year, and now 'Eega' took double the time, but in the end, it was worth it.

Make your film for the least amount you can.

Making an independent film is so different.