Paul Schrader Quotes

I always try to approach a film from the point of view of the director.

Many people who have watched 'Pieta' have said my filmmaking has become more objective.

I just see myself as a guy who's trying to make a film or, make art.

There's got to be something you want to tell and that's the engine which spurs all of the work you have to do in order to create the story, but you have to love some sort of nugget of what you're telling to be a filmmaker.

In film, you have to let go sometimes.

I found it very difficult to explain to someone why you did a film. It's not like having a conversation.

If it were all in the script, why make the film?

I mean, '8½' to me is such a great dissertation on the whole, you know, act of filmmaking and creativity.

I try not to look for messages in films.

Everything about filmmaking tries to distract you from that first fine rapturous vision you have of the film.

So I used formal techniques to make the film more perceptive emotionally.

In the moment of making films, I want to share my observations of life, not of other films.

The notion of directing a film is the invention of critics - the whole eloquence of cinema is achieved in the editing room.

I don't make films to reproduce reality.

The need to look behind the curtain is great for a filmmaker. But whether you want to deconstruct what you like as a viewer, what you like and don't like, I wish we could let films stand on their own a little bit.

I went from silent films to watching French new wave cinema. I became entrapped by it all. That's when I knew I wanted to do film. The moment you start looking at film from a critique point of view - there's a difference between watching a film as an audience and with a critical point of view.

I've always tried to create music the way Kubrick makes film, just kind of mimicking consciousness. He has a way of mimicking this greater power.

When I make a film, the yardstick is my mind. If I laugh at the jokes and feel sad at the serious undersides, then the subject works.

You can't make a film for your personal satisfaction. That is why I detest the cinema of people like Mani Kaul.

The thing is, as a film director, you're essentially alone: You have to tell a story primarily through pictures, and only you know the film you see in your head.

My responsibility is to make a film and find my dramatic language; I don't have any political or social responsibility.

Alfred Hitchcock once told me, when I was analyzing a lot of things about his pictures, 'Clint, you must remember, it's only a movie.'

Luck, I never looked to make difficult movies on purpose. You make the films you can make.

As a storyteller, when you're writing a movie and when you're directing, you want to keep people entertained. That's the whole point, right? It has to be entertaining.

You become the movie you are making.