Maggie Gyllenhaal Quotes

I've made movies that cost less than one car chase.

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.

Talking to other people who make low-budget movies, everyone kind of has the same struggle.

I figured, 'When is that ever going to happen again?'. So I basically set out the opposite way movies are made; I set out with a budget first. I said, 'What can I do well for $40,000?'.

I believe in making movies very inexpensively; I think that way too much money is spent on making movies. Enough movies are being made, but not enough experimental ones.

We had a tiny budget for 'The Greatest,' which was the opposite of 'Wall Street.' We just kind of went in and did it. You've got four or five takes and then you've got to move on. We didn't even have trailers to stay in or anything.

From a production point of view, I still have one foot firmly planted in the independent film world, and much of the shooting on 'Jumper' was done 'Swingers'-style because that was the only way we could afford to do it.

I love films that are made with almost no budget.

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

Filmmakers, they tell me they want to make movies. I say, 'Good, go out, buy a $500 camera, get some friends and make a movie. Don't go to Hollywood. Stay wherever you are.'

If you want to make movies you need to think on a micro-micro level and figure out how to make them for nothing with people who really care about your movie and really want to make it.

I usually make films with $2 and a paper clip.

Most people who've had a big hit movie like 'Paranormal Activity,' the next thing they say is, 'I want to make a $100 million movie.' I have no interest in making more expensive movies.

My dream is just to make zero-budget movies for the rest of my life, because I love that environment.

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 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.

I love making cheap films. I really do. What I've found is that I work better when it's both a fairly low budget and a short schedule. It focuses the mind, and it's a better atmosphere.

I didn't go to film school; I studied fine art - I learned how to be a filmmaker on everybody else's money.

Independent films now, they want to give you $2 million to make it, 21 days to shoot it and they want 10 movie stars in it.

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.

None of the pictures I take a risk in cost a lot, so it doesn't take much for them to turn a profit. We don't deal in big budgets. We know what we want and we shoot it and we don't waste anything. I never understand these films that cost twenty, thirty million dollars when they could be made for half that. Maybe it's because no one cares. We care.

When I made my first film, I think the thing was probably helped me the most was that it was such an unusual thing to do in the early 50s for someone who actually go and make a film. People thought it was impossible. It really is terribly easy. All anybody needs is a camera, a tape recorder, and some imagination.

If you're going to make a movie for ten thousand you can talk everybody into doing it for free. You could make a really good-looking movie right for ten grand, if you have an idea.

To make a low-budget independent is not easy work.

I'm really glad to have made a movie that way on Superbad, because I learned a lot about what can be done and what the limitations are.