Robert Altman Quotes

There have been things over the years that didn't work. 'Body Of Lies,' directed by Ridley Scott, which I did with Russell Crowe and Leonardo DiCaprio, is a really tight action thriller, but when it opened in the U.S. it was number two to 'Beverly Hills Chihuahua.'

I have never made a movie that's attracted a 14-year-old boy.

Nowadays, if a studio assumes that his film is bad, there is always an executive that gets more nervous than usual and thinks that if they change the music, the film will become a masterpiece.

From now on, any flick I'm ever involved with, I conduct critics screenings thusly: 'You wanna see it early to review it? Fine: pay like you would if you saw it next week.'

I don't know if there aren't any films like 'E.T.' anymore. I just feel that the industry has changed so much. There are so many outlets now.

If you make action movies, the critics will savage you, and then your movies are outdated the following week with the new wave of special effects.

I use to watch like maybe three or four movies, five days out of the week. I was a movie buff, but I really didn't know what it was like behind the scenes, or the whole political process of it.

Critics in particular treat CGI as a virus that's infecting film.

When you first think of making a monster movie you have to realize that a lot of people may be down on you because there is a big prejudice against such films.

The good thing about feature films is that the budgets tend to scale.

You can make films, and often, they get released on four screens in the U.K. Although it's been interesting and good for you, if no one's seen it, what's the point?

I don't know if it's fair to say that it's a bad time for movies. It seems to me that throughout the entire history of filmmaking, every year there have been about two really wonderful movies, about 10 others that are pretty good, and a whole pile of garbage.

If you're not grown up enough to understand that a trailer is not done by the director, then fine. Judge the movie from the trailer.

After six years of working on low-budget independent films of the too-weird-to-watch variety, being asked by DreamWorks to come and play with the big boys, it was like finding an unicorn in your sock drawer.

As ridiculous as it is for anybody who knows how movies are made, there were people who actually wrote in reviews that this picture [Bad Influence] had been put out to capitalize on the scandal. Which, of course, would have been impossible.

I don't read the reviews because they're too horrible and the reviewers have not been big supporters of mine over the years, probably because I make these big populist movies and they hate it.

I worked as hard to write the worst film of the year as I did to write the best film of the year.

We typically make movies that are geared towards 18-year-olds. The people who pay and go to movies more than two or three times are usually under 22, so I get how it works. I don't really want 18-year-old boys to find me that attractive, that kind of would creep me out at this stage.

My entire career is contemporary based, not by choice, but just by character. So, all the movies I've done, except for one in 40 years, are contemporary. But I never did an effects movie. So, I'm also a producer and I was really curious about how this whole thing went together.

Mainstream Hollywood makes a few good movies a year. And in order to be in one of those, you have to be one of five people. Hollywood makes many bad movies too, which I'm not interested in being a part of. But there are only a few good independent movies a year, and many, many bad ones. I want to be in good movies, and I want people to see them.

I had this movie, Death Race, that was a passion project for me that I'd had in development for almost ten years.

I gulped, then stepped over the threshold into the house where I'd lived as a boy. After eighteen long years of wandering, I had finally come home.

Ever since there's been a Hollywood, they remake a movie every 20 years.

On the one hand, you have these huge budget films that cost millions of dollars. They are effects driven, they don't have well known actors in them, and they are making money. Well, some of them are. One the other hand, you have Stallone and Statham, and guys like DeNiro and Pacino, and Costner, who are all trying to make movies about real people. They are interested in character driven projects.

It was not easy victory in the America Cup. Our boys spent years experimenting with different designs for their boat before they came up with the innovative idea of having a submerged nuclear submarine tow it.