Roland Emmerich Quotes

I'm not the kind of director who aims to send a message out.

I don't make films for myself; I make them in order to communicate with an audience.

I don't believe films should have a message, but 'Saleem' does.

My films, I've tried to put a message into them. It's not about the gore; it's not about the horror element that are in them. It's more about the message, for me. That's what it is, and I'm using this platform to be able to show my feelings of what I think.

When I first set out to make movies, that's what I thought I was going to do - make movies that mean something. And each movie had its own message, some stronger than others. Even 'X-Men' has its own message of tolerance.

I'm not an activist at all. I'm a filmmaker, and I wanted the people involved to tell their own story.

Movies have power. Power to impact society and the choices we make. I want to entertain, but I also want to say something to the world.

I was attracted to filmmaking in college because of my love of storytelling. You can have such an impact and reach a broader audience than conventional journalism.

Film is the only language I speak, and I have been lucky to be involved in some great stories. You don't want to preach to people, but you want them to think about why things are the way they are, the history that is there as well as the possibilities.

It is very easy to make clear what you want a film to say, but I did not wish to engage in overt propaganda, even for the right cause. I wanted to create an experience through the films, something where people could have the freedom of their own response to them.

I want to make movies about my country from my point of view.

I like Spike Lee a lot. He's incredibly gifted and I don't think he gets the credit he deserves as a filmmaker.

Look, I'm just a storyteller. When I make a film, I never want the film to become a vehicle of social propaganda.

With journalism, films always have to be to do with some personal statement of your own. As a general rule, I resist that. In the States, a question that kept coming up was this: 'How can you, as a man, talk about three women?'

A movie is really provocation. It's not a message, it's not a statement.

A movie is about human beings, about humanity.

All my films have some kind of statement about something - but I have to coat it with entertainment to make it palatable. Otherwise it becomes a polemic, and people don't want to see it. If you're trying to get a message out to people, you've got to entertain them at the same time.

If you have something to say, a movie is a really great medium to say it. It doesn't matter what the message is.

Movies, as I grew up loving them, were always about something.

Every director, when they make a film, their souls speak. The kind of stories they choose to make, it shows their souls.

My goal is to always try to make you feel something, whether that's humor or sadness or excitement, and to try to manipulate screen space.

They[ Lana and Andy Wachowski]are true artists. They really are trying to say something and trying to create something original, and there aren't that many people who do that.

I do not make films primarily for children. I make them for the child in all of us, whether we be six or sixty.

This is not a movie about smelling the urine! It's another kind of movie." Volker Schlöndorff got Billy Wilder to agree to these conversations - you can buy it - because Volker spoke German at times. And he said to Billy Wilder: "What is in your mind?" And he said: "If you're going to try to tell the truth to the audience, you'd better be funny or they'll kill you." And I haven't forgotten that.

Filmmaking is essentially about entertainment, but it's amazing to realize that it has this other muscle that could actually help. Do you know what I mean? People permit entertainment to wash over them, but every once and a while, entertainment - and this is entertaining - also galvanizes something else and that would be a really good thing to have happen in this case.