Sam Mendes Quotes

It's disappointing to see films become pure entertainment, so that it's not an art form.

I still hope that more people can create art, even though artistic genres may never be the most popular or money-making genres. But the thing is, I think art is more long-lasting. It stays in people, and it changes them.

Marvel has always been to a large extent the world around us. It has to be evocative of the world around us, the feelings people are feeling. You take real-world concerns and you put a Marvel face on it.

I love the fact that a lot of my audience is people from the inner city. African-Americans love my films. Whenever I go to have a meeting at Universal, the security guard just leaps to his feet and comes over, bumps my hand, and says, "Thank you! Thank you, I love your films!" And it's people who are kind of at the cutting edge of life and survival, and being near the nitty-gritty, who like my films, and I like that.

A man who strains himself on the stage is bound, if he is any good, to strain all the people sitting in the stalls.

I think people pick up on that. You use personal stuff and mix it all in - I definitely pull on that stuff in my acting.

I say in speeches that a plausible mission of artists is to make people appreciate being alive at least a little bit. I am then asked if I know of any artists who pulled that off. I reply, 'The Beatles did.

In time, perhaps, we will mark the memory of September 11th in stone and metal, something we can show children, as yet unborn, to help them understand what happened on this minute and on this day. But for those of us who lived through these events, the only marker we’ll ever need is the tick of a clock at the 46th minute of the eighth hour of the 11th day.

Those are the rules. To improvise in a movie with other people, when they're following a script, everybody has to know what's going on. I think a line or two we might change. Certainly, I do. But I wouldn't call it improvising. I'd call it fudging the lines.

Today's work, I don't know it just doesn't make sense, a lot of it. It's just guns and sex and more guns and more sex. You say to yourself, when the hell are you gonna get down to the nitty-gritty and do something good so people can be entertained? I mean if they call this entertainment.

I want to make movies that people see. I really think that movies are the most popular form of story telling ever and have such a huge impact on culture when they do.

If right now, culture's so divisive, it just leaves these millions of people like me out.

I love the way art moves people emotionally. I love the fact that when someone purchases art it is the one thing that will last for generations.

One filmmaker makes films that are deep, intellectual, profound and confrontational. And the other one makes purely vacuous, escapist films. I'm not sure the one who makes escapist films is making a poorer contribution than the one who makes the deeper films.

Usually, those people don't even like actors and they can't wait until they get in the cutting room. They kind of break down in categories: directors who like to be surprised and some of them abhor being surprised. As far as directing, we all direct when we're acting in movies... every single one of us.

The importance of music extends well beyond its performance.

I think I have much more appreciation for directing and movies overall versus a performance or an actor. Their body of work is more interesting.

I guess that storytelling would be for me to keep making art that touches people in a way that nothing else can.

I don't know why people see the things that they do. I wouldn't pay to see them, they don't touch me or move me in any way.

I don't see a lot of studio executives caring at all about what the culture is telling us. They think they make the culture. They're not out taking the temperature of things and using the results of whatever sort of cultural surveying they're doing to make movies. They're interested in doing things that people are already comfortable with, and taking those properties and filling them.

I like the idea that [Mahatma] Gandhi is appearing now in an opera hall in all these different places, and people kind of think about it again.

I guess it's one thing to play a character and relate to a character, and it's a lot closer to me than people might think. They are obviously watching a person with another name. But when they are listening to my music, it's way more me and my story and my words . . . that is the main difference in that.

People tend to think when you're on dramatic films, that it's all so heavy, but it's really not when you're working with great actors.

I'd really rather put songs on people's lips than in their ears.

I hope I make films where you walk away . . . with work to do, arguments to have, things to worry about, things to care about. In that sense, I would regard what I do as political.