Oliver Stone Quotes

I found filmmaking to be a very practical art form. It's about figuring out how to create within the very practical limitations/constraints of time, money, and large groups of collaborators.

I operate best on big vision and creative detail.

I still to this day maintain that in that million-and-a-half feet of film [Heaven's Gate] that we shot, we thought we were making a great American film. I honestly believe that Michael [Cimino] was under a tremendous amount of pressure, and Michael's response to pressure from what I saw was to double down and to get more aggressive and to get more kind of arrogant, but I don't think it was real. I think it was the response to pressure.

It's very bizarre though when you get hired and then the director will say, "I know how this goes." And you're thinking, "Wait a minute, I thought that I was doing this" but basically what they really want, especially if they wrote it, is they want you to do it as they imagined it. It's virtually impossible.

You have to realize, making movies is the weirdest thing you could ever do. It's a contrivance, but you're attempting to reach people's hearts in the dark, and there are so many factors that are out of your control.

The most important thing as a filmmaker, the hardest journey you'll have, is to find your point of view.

My films are always a struggle to make and will remain so.

I realized that filmmaking is an eminently scalable act. No matter how big or how small, there's joys and stresses that will all scale themselves magnificently to fit the production.

Every director has their own unique working style.

Yes, it was difficult - making 'The Act of Killing' in particular was a very lonely process. No one really believed in it until very close to the end. But it was also a sanctuary. I was working in obscurity.

I don't get to make many features. It's not like that's something I can just snap my fingers and make happen.

I have to do a better job of picking the spots where I want to attack and picking the right moment when I need to attack.

Becoming a strategic thinker is about opening your mind to possibilities. It’s about seeing the bigger picture. It’s about understanding the various parts of your business, taking them apart, and then putting them back together again in a more powerful way. It’s about insight, invention, emotion and imagination focused on reshaping some part of the world.

I think that I'm a pretty great producer, but the vision behind Batman is Chris Nolan. I'm there to do my best to help execute that vision, and I think I do a really good job, but the vision is Chris Nolan.

Anybody that makes films knows the film is never finished. It's abandoned or it's ripped out of your hands, and it's thrown into the marketplace, never finished. It's a very rare experience where you find a filmmaker who says, "That's exactly what I wanted. I got everything I needed. I made it just perfect. I'm going to put it out there."

When I make a movie, I just make the movie. I don't think about the success of it. If it becomes successful, that's an amazing treat. If it doesn't, you had a great time making it and you learned from it, and then you make a new thing.

No film ever ends up exactly as you would like it to, but with minor exceptions, THX came out pretty much as I had visualized it, thanks to some excellent assistance -- and a whole lot of luck.

I think that while you're making the film it's important to just keep your eye on the ball and make the best movie you can, and then realize that it's out of your control.

The problem with Indians is that we have lost the habit of thinking big!

Directing is monumentally complicated and it's a function of all the time you pay to it. I think it would be great to do a movie I'm not in, I could just eat Fritos and just say, 'yeah, it's good!' Some day.

I don't think I'd ever write anything that I don't also direct just because it's so hard and painful to write as it is.

My goal has been to learn how to get movies made without losing sight of the reasons I began. I have had to learn to recognize the insidious nature of the beast without becoming one.

You carry that through and adapt it to a camera lens, but you're quite right, you cannot be sure of what an audience is going to do. You don't know what's going to happen to the piece you're doing anyway. You don't know how it's going to be edited. There are a lot more unknowns in cinema. But that you have to readily accept. That's when, I think, you have to forget about intellect, to a degree. Intuition is very important when you're working with a lens, I believe, for what the lens is doing, too.

I'm just glad that on a budget like this I don't have to make any of those hard decisions because I feel it must be a real job to direct this, as there's so much going on.

The Pentagon needs precious resources to build the strength of America, and we can't say, 'this is really important to this community, and it's really not vital to the national security, but we ought to do it anyway.' So, I think we have to have a discipline on this