Todd Haynes Quotes

A period film is a gift for a cinematographer.

I love period drama as much as the next person, but there's a tendency to let all of the costume get in the way of the people.

Polanski's 'Chinatown' is a film that I have purposefully and consciously imitated, but 'Vertigo' is one that has got into my bloodstream. Every time I reappraise things that I've done, the influence is there, time and time again.

I believe realism is nothing but an analysis of reality. Film scripts have a synthetical constitution.

In a way, we tried to make 'The Salvation' a contemporary film with contemporary emotions. At the same time, in the script, you get a feel that all the small talk is not a part of our universe. It's more precise talk.

Every time you make a film, you create a world. You make decisions about sets and costumes, and you create a universe connected to reality, but not reality itself.

It's deliberate that a lot of my films have been period pieces.

I am definitely writing letters to lots of directors in my mind when I'm making a film. I'm chasing Woody Allen and Godard and Milos Forman and all these people.

I have a lot of things I want to do. I have a lot of fire. I want to do film. I want to do action movies. I want to do period pieces.

When I first read the script for 'A Little Chaos,' I just loved reading it, as it is a really lovely, accessible, contemporary period film.

I always collect a bunch of images for every film that I do, that reminds me of an essence of the character, or the time that they live in, or what they're experiencing.

What I loved about the 1950s is that there is an aesthetic to even the average film. The way the camera is placed, the way characters move, the way you dressed the sets, the respect for craft and actors, I do miss that in today's films.

Of course I know what works for me and what kind of tone I want my films to have.

Being movie director you've got the art department, you've got the actors, you've got the camera department, you've got make-up and hair, and props. You've got your finger in all these pies, and you're making sure that everything cooks at the right temperature.

I've seen so many period pieces in my life, I really enjoy them so much, a lot of my favorite movies are period pieces.

I think making a film is as much knowing what you don't like as what you do like, and avoiding the things that you don't like like the plague and making sure that they never appear onscreen in any shape or form.

In order to make a film, you have to operate on many different levels, making all these different forms of expression converse, and so I just followed that intuition.

Akira Kurosawa, David Lean and Alfred Hitchcock were the main inspirations for 'Samurai Jack,' along with a lot of '70s cinema.

The influence of the Shaw Brothers films on my work has been profound. In addition to the richness of Asian culture, we at Wu-Tang were fascinated with the struggles between the oppressed Chinese villagers and the repressive Manchu authority and how it mirrored our own experiences growing up as black kids in America's inner cities.

People think a director teaches acting. But in good films a director doesn't.

I always like to give and present my actors in a different look.

Filming a story set in a war zone in the '60s was such a treat, as it gave me so much scope to dive into.

My favourite TV show is... 'Downton Abbey.' The characters are wonderful, and the style is created so beautifully on screen. Everything from the table settings to the linen seem perfect to me. While I'm watching it, I'm in a totally different world.

I never think about it much, the visual aspect of it, until we start making the movie. I don't really think about it when we write. When we finish, and I start putting the film together, and we pick the locations, I do think about that a lot.

I'm very passionate about making good films. I want to make good films for the whole world because I think it is one of the biggest inspirations for society.