Stephen Hunter Quotes

I grew up with Forrest J. Ackerman's 'Famous Monsters of Filmland' along with a plethora of movie tomes and wanted to write about film with a sense of personality, passion, and humor.

I see a lot of movies. I love films as a spectator, and that's never obscured by the part of me that does the work myself. I just love going to the movies.

'The Dark Knight,' 'The Rocketeer' and definitely the first 'Superman' movie by Richard Donner are the best. I tend to be softer in my judgment about what's a bad movie - I don't think anyone intends to make a bad movie, and sometimes it just doesn't click for some reason.

Have you ever noticed how most critics disagree with the public? That should tell you a lot about critics.

I read every single review, because I love film criticism and I'm interested.

If you're famous, you suck, just for being famous. People in England totally get that; Americans don't.

Two of my favorite artists are Josh Smith and Joe Bradley. But I argued against them for years, until I grew to love them and felt stupid for my immediate reaction towards their work.

One thing I don't do anymore is read or pay attention to the critical response, which is a bummer because when I started, and when I was in school, I loved to read old film criticism.

Some of my movies hold the bottom rankings on Rotten Tomatoes.

From the very beginning, all of my films have divided the critics. Some have thought them wonderful, and others have found very little good to say. But subsequent critical opinion has always resulted in a very remarkable shift to the favorable. In one instance, the same critic who originally rapped the film has several years later put it on an all-time best list. But of course, the lasting and ultimately most important reputation of a film is not based on reviews, but on what, if anything, people say about it over the years, and on how much affection for it they have.

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.

It's no secret that I didn't love 'An Officer And A Gentleman' then, and I certainly don't love it now, so at least no one could accuse me of being inconsistent.

The fact is some people really love my work, some people not so much, but at the end of the day, I don't want anybody coming out of the movie thinking about me.

I look at other people my age in this industry, other famous people my age, and they've just got famous friends. Which is cool, but I love being normal and just chilling at mine.

You've got certain guys that just want to be famous and then you've got the real musicians that just love playing music.

If you go out and see a lot of movies in a given year, it's really hard to come up with a top ten, because you saw a lot of stuff that you liked. A top 20 is easier. You probably get one masterpiece a year, and I don't think you should expect more than one masterpiece a year, except in a really great year.

I love watching film. I love watching stories. I watch the people in them... Even, sometimes, films that nobody else can watch - 'How could you look at that? It's lousy' - I can look at it and be totally into it.

I love 'Sunset Boulevard.' I love the writing, I love the performances, I love the camera work. I think it's a perfect movie.

The critics didn't like it at all. They felt it was crude and violent without meaning, and they dumped on it. 'Point Blank' marked a shift in movie-making, and they weren't ready for it. However, I think those were the last negative words ever said about it.

I'm not snobby about my movies; I just love all films.

I grew up in New York, so I had a lot of access to all kinds of movies, and I would handwrite reviews of them on loose-leaf paper.

My mother was loved by so many people, famous and not so famous.

'Beasts of the Southern Wild' was one of those films that I felt like I could dismiss because it received so many accolades, but then I watched it and was won over.

The 'Reno' movie is very solid. 'Balls of Fury' I'm pretty disappointed in - I blame myself. People hate both of those movies equally.

I love film criticism as an art. I think it's a very important thing.