James Wan Quotes

There's so many interesting aspects of making a movie: the costume department, the set design, the casting itself, the locations.

I don't feel very glowing, especially after wearing makeup - and not necessarily my choice of makeup - for 12 hours straight on a movie set. When I'm playing a character, her look is sometimes different from my own.

I love watching Hollywood movies - I just don't know if I'd be happy doing a 'Jurassic Park.'

I grew up loving films and making stupid movies with a good friend of mine, who now actually has a career in a really prominent special effects house, so he's still doing it. We just started messing around with a camera.

I loved being behind the scenes and finding out how they make movies.

'Fast & Furious' is a well-oiled machine. Those guys really know what they're doing. The guys that work behind the scenes are just as important as the ones in front of the cameras. They are car enthusiasts. They live and breathe this world.

I had the greatest time of my life making 'Saw 3.' More fun than '2' for sure.

I learned a lot doing 'Wolverine,' and I was also very fortunate, in the sense that I got to do a huge number of visual effects shots.

'Dark Knight' shot in London and Chicago, and we were on that for so long.

I like working on big budget films.

The irony is that you can't use real rain to make movies.

I read a magazine called 'Cinefantastique' that had just come out with a making of 'Star Wars' issue. They had some very long and detailed interviews with a whole bunch of people at ILM. I think I memorized that whole magazine.

I'll never forget travelling to New Zealand for three months to make the 'Underworld' films - that was pretty special.

Arachnophobia' was one of the first films I did major effects for.

Our cinema is star-based, while Hollywood is script-based.

There are shots that I had to walk away from because we had to get the movie in the theaters. There are some in "Independence Day" and "Godzilla," but lately I got smart. I would plan it so I had enough time [to get it right]. That just comes with experience.

I'm never critical or judgmental about whether or not a movie is any good. The way I look at it, if several hundred people got together every day for a year or so - a number of then willing to put on heavy makeup, wear clothes that weren't their own and pretend to be people other than themselves - and their whole purpose for doing all this was to entertain me, then I'm not gonna start worrying about whether or not they did a good job. The effort alone was enough to make me happy.

When you are on the set, you have different departments - you got camera, sound, props, hair, makeup, catering, executives. Imagine each one of those are spokes on the wagon wheel. All the spokes come into a hub: the hub is the director. The wood the spokes go into are distribution and promotion; the steel wheel around the hub is the film. None of these have anything in common with each other.

I like to work in films, but I'd love to work in the technical side of film. I'd love to work with, say, Greg Nicotero [The Walking Dead] in kind of, like, special makeup effects. I'd probably say, "Good with clay and latex." Although I don't know what kind of job that'd get me.

I never really understood how movies were made, because it was such a technical accomplishment.

There was a lot of stuff [in Rock of Ages] that had effects in it and I thought it was too smooth. I thought it would be sexier if it were in-camera cuts. So I did that.

I was just like, "I want to make a decent 2-D movie." I was so worried that, instead of being a decent 2-D movie, it would have been a bad 3-D one.

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.

I learned so much about the making of Star Wars and that became a real drive for me, right from the time I was 12 or 13.

You always learn something about movies. Directing or acting, there's always something new. It's the technological thing; there's always something to learn.