Keenen Ivory Wayans Quotes

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.

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.

Low budgets force you to be more creative. Sometimes, with too much money, time and equipment, you can over-think. My way, you can use your gut instinct.

All studio movies are the middle of the Bell curve. The only way to do something is to do it yourself. And the only way to do that is to not take any money from anyone or take as little money as possible from anyone and that's it.

I'd be absolutely happy to go back and make a smaller picture. I never want my choices to be dictated by budget. That's one of the reasons why I take so much pride in being able to make films for $2 and a paper clip - because I can always get my hands on $2 and a paper clip. I never have to ask for permission for that.

The Tom Strong thing was totally for the money. I plan to get looser after I finish this Maggie saga.

On the last couple of movies I made - big-budget Hollywood movies - I really missed being able to create my own material.

My customer isn't wrapped up in labels and money.

My knock with filmmaking is the whole bureaucracy around it, so in some ways, staying outside of it is easier for me.

I'm always going to go up against movies with bigger muscle and money, so I need to have a strong grass-roots game.

I like the intimacy of independent films and I like the idea that people aren't being paid necessarily as much money as some one on a studio film.

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?'.

You do small movies because the script is good and because you believe in the director. You don't care about the money. And when they disappear, it's a pity.

Now, more then ever, we have the ability to make films for almost nothing and that's broken down all barriers of entry. I think it's a new golden age of film-making. With that, there needs to be the ability to recoup investment dollars, people need to make money.

I've always worked very efficiently on small budgets, both in documentaries and in features.

We've turned down multi million dollar films, simply because we liked the film better. We have the luxury to do so - we have projects that make the money, and others that we do for love.

Often, people who want to make interesting films simply don't have the money to do it.

Working on films where the money's more important than the creativity, I just get a bit freaked out by that. I just don't feel comfortable.

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

I just want to make films that have enough of a budget to pull off high-level imagery but also have a budget that is low enough that I can do what I want.

There is no free lunch, so if you're playing with the big train set - on big movies - it's a lot of money they're entrusting you with, and you have to get that money back for them. I don't take that responsibility lightly.

I'm a big believer in creating parameters for creativity. I think parameters make people more creative. So that starts with my budgets. I only do low budget movies, and I think that makes the movies better.

We've been remarkably lucky in that we've been free to make the movies we've wanted to make the way we've wanted to make them. They've all been made for a price.

I think I've been lucky enough not to have to do movie after movie after movie for financial reasons, so I've been able to live life and also make movies. I didn't have to grind them out. I could go long periods where I was living life rather than tripping over cables.

They all want you to make a movie for under a million dollars, which I don't want to. I don't want to be a faux radical film-maker at 70. I did that. I don't need to do it again.