Michael Mann Quotes

What I do not like, the kind of high-resolution cameras, 4K, 6K, for shooting dialogue, for having faces and close-ups of actors, and you see every single pore in the skin.

I didn't want people to sit there and watch 10 minutes of film, and all they write about is 48 frames.

I hate it when you are watching a movie where the characters are on the news, and for some reason they shoot it with a 35mm camera or a 4K camera, and they just put it on the TV as if that's the way it would look - it always takes me out of it by putting a filter on certain things. If it's too high quality, you're never gonna buy it.

If you are tuning in just for the show, you're going to be sorely disappointed.

A successful current affairs television show seems to be more and more a cross between a music hall turn and a scene in a torture chamber.

When your show keeps coming back, year after year, you have a responsibility because your fans know your show sometimes better than you do. You can't play games with them. You have to be really focused and concentrated, and play at your best in every department. The writing staff has to be fantastic. Our director line-up has to be great. Everything has to be better and better. Your fans keep track of the details.

The first must that any director has is to not force his public.

I did sit in cinemas as a kid looking at English and American movies thinking, "Wouldn't it be great if the characters were like real people?" And the worst thing is films are constantly advertising themselves, drawing attention to their style of things. But actually I make films that I think are extremely sophisticated and cinematic. But you don't want the audience thinking about the bloody film. You want them to think about what's going on, and believe in it. Be flies on the wall, you know?

The HD revolution is over, it happened. HD won. Everybody wants HD.

I want to tell stories which require something of an audience, by way of thought, argument, emotion, because I'm more often in an audience than I am a maker of films, and that's the kind of movie I want to see.

I think the audience likes to be entertained.

If you're not nervous then you're not paying attention.

The audience loves it when you pay attention to details.

You never know what you have until you put it in front of an audience. That's the truth. That's the truth of filmmaking and that's why you make movies, for an audience to, hopefully, enjoy it.

If you're not connected emotionally to a story, then you're dead. You're as a filmmaker really just opening the door for people to lose interest and their minds to wander, for them to start picking it apart. That's what people will do, people will naturally tear stuff apart because they're trapped with it, they paid money for it. And they came into it wanting to love it. So all you can really do is piss off the audience. Unless you do things right.

I love when a TV show, or entertainment in general, makes me feel something; be it positive, be it negative, be it happiness, be it awkward, uncomfortable if it can make me feel, it's done it's job.

People have curiosity, they have intelligence, they have interest in understanding their peers. But producers and directors of cinema have decided that the seats in the theaters have been made to transform people's minds to lazy minds.

My UK fans are quite similar to the States but they pay much more attention to the details, that I like. They listen, party, and dance moving through the changing moods of the music with me.

From the simplest lyric to the most complex novel and densest drama, literature is asking us to pay attention. Pay attention to the frog. Pay attention to the west wind. Pay attention to the boy on the raft, the lady in the tower, the old man on the train. In sum, pay attention to the world and all that dwells therein and thereby learn at last to pay attention to yourself and all that dwells therein.

At a certain point the audience shouldn't worry about catching every word and understanding every twist and turn, because at a certain point that's pretty much impossible.

What's great about it is that painting doesn't move. And so in the 21st century, when we're used to clicking and browsing and having constant choice, painting simply sits there silently and begs you to notice the smallest of detail.

Writing is seeing. It is paying attention.

As a filmmaker you have to keep asking yourself the question are we really going to impress them [audience] either by the wow factor, the intelligence factor, the I didn't see that coming factor?

It's very important that a film that intends to play tricks on the audience... has to play fair with the audience. For me, any time you're going to have a reveal in the film, it's essential that it have been shown to the audience as much as possible. What that means is that some people are going to figure it out very early on. Other people not til the end. Everybody watches the film differently.

I’ve been accused of ‘raping’ the audience in my films, and I admit to that freely — all movies assault the viewer in one way or another.