Rob Reiner Quotes

Let film-makers take a call about what films they want to do.

People always ask why I don't make independent movies. I do make independent movies - I just make them at Sony and Paramount.

I just want to make good films on my own wherever I can.

The business has changed, and some people can keep talking about theatrical in these wondrous terms - it will survive, but it becomes narrower what you can make. So the films I'm most interested in, studios - or even the independents - aren't making them. I'm mostly interested in people.

I direct, and I make movies I can't finance. I can't raise money. I can't sell anything. I make things.

The system is not really particularly amenable to filmmakers who write and direct their own work. It's much more about the studio already having a property that has a marketable concept and then hiring the director on board.

To make independent films, you can't think about them too much, ponder on them too much, get overwhelmed by the enormity of it.

It's nice when you're working in Hollywood and there's a movie you'd like to see that no one is making anymore. You make it yourself.

I'm so not interested in producing, other than doing my own work, producing my own films. I only do it as favors, for other people to get their films made.

For me, the movies I like are all independent. And getting an independent feature made, it's like you get down to the selling organs part, and it just loses some of its luster.

A film like 'Good Night And Good Luck,' you make that for $7 million because you know it's a black-and-white film, and it's not an easy sell. If you make it for $7 million, then everybody can have a chance to make a little bit of money, and you get to make the film you want to make.

For the most part, studio movies have huge budgets. They don't do anything under 30 to 40 million. When you have that much money at stake, you have so many people breathing down your neck.

I don't make movies because I think audiences will want to go see them.

I'd just like to be in films that I would like to see.

There are really only a handful of directors who have a final cut clause in Hollywood. You only get that power if you've made a couple of hundred-million-dollar successes.

With indies, all they have is their script and it's very important to them. The characters are better drawn, the stories more precise and the experience greater than with studio films where sometimes they fill in the script as they're shooting.

We try to guide with a light touch. Sometimes we can be helpful, and my goal with my team, both on the series side and on the film side, is that the collaboration should always be invited. In other words, we're not looking to impose our view on the filmmaker; we hire a storyteller because we love the story, and we love their ability to tell it.

When we did Wayne's World, it was 14 million dollars and they didn't bug us too much because they just thought it was some little movie that nobody was ever going to see. We showed them.

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.'

Since childhood, I'd dreamed of making a film, but producers in France and Germany wanted to make commercial films with chinoiserie. I refused.

The one thing I want to do - and I am doing - is starting my own production company, for me to produce and direct in the future. Have a bit more say and control - become the storyteller more than just the character. I want to choose the story, plant the seed, and watch it grow. I just want to have a bit more involvement.

People complain about Hollywood movies being similar. That goes right down to the fundamental green light process, because the process involves having to compare it to three other movies.

The truth is, we were sick of, every time we finished a movie, having to start all over again from nothing, going to a studio, pitching an idea, setting up a new office.

I'll put it this way: with the kind of films that I do - creatively driven, with interesting directors and writers - I don't feel the need to work with the super established, top-tier directors that are out there.

At Pixar, we believe strongly that filmmakers should develop ideas they are passionate about. This may sound like a no-brainer, but in fact in Hollywood, the big movie studios have whole departments devoted to acquiring and developing projects that will only later be paired with a director-for-hire.