Wes Anderson Quotes

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.

The intimate conversations have its moments, because you have to sell the characters, because there is so much going on. It's so easy to get lost in the special effects and forget about the performances. The dialogue scenes have been great. It's been great working with Bryan and the writers to find where we're going and what's the story. Yeah, it's been really, really interesting.

I pride myself on doing character-driven movies and, when my movies have worked, it's been because of the right casting and the right character, and it just clicks.

I'm looking for challenges, and as always, what matters is the script, the character and the director.

When you find something where you can give people a message and still make it an exciting movie, you get very, very excited about something. You probably even work harder than you normally do.

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.

When I was working on 'Big Fan,' I didn't really feel like any lines needed to be changed or enhanced or expanded upon in any way. I thought it was a solid script. All you had to do was what it said.

Every frame and every scene has to have an intention.

It's very hard when you're doing a new play that you believe in, and you want to tell the story in the best way possible.

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

I really loved making 'A Walk to Remember', so I'm not afraid of making smaller films. But for me, I just need to connect to the characters.

What always leads me in terms of my movies are characters.

The best of all kinds of movies are character-driven, and I definitely don't want to lose sight of why Derek and I started to write movies together in the first place.

There are no great scripts - just great films.

Ultimately, it has been a struggle- but I was in Minneapolis and Austin a couple of weeks ago, sitting in theaters with complete strangers watching this weird movie that Kirk and I thought up and I was excited to be making film.

I don't understand the whole testing-numbers thing. It is not how I want to make movies.

What I like most about directing is creating a world more so than anything. To me, the music is the wrapping paper on that world.

When you make a film you usually make a film about an idea.

If I had to choose criteria, for me, it's about first the director. I want to be a part of something that's good and intellectually challenging. After the director it's the character and the story. That's the deal for me.

I know the movies that I've liked, and I know the experience that they've given me, so the goal is always to try to create a movie that I would like myself and that would knock me out, challenge me or intrigue me in some way. That's been my criteria for figuring out what I want to do, or also when I'm writing something or creating a scene.

Once you get into a feature, whether it's a sequel or an original one, you have to start all over again, and you're creating a world, creating new characters. You're also tracking emotions. You're trying to create emotion and create a character that you can fall in love with for two hours.

I tried so hard with movies like Vertigo and Middle of the Night and others. I felt those would show me that it's only a matter of time before I'd find the right one to reach out and touch people.

I feel like the great filmmakers who have a true voice, yeah they take the notes, they understand the notes, but it's really about the notes underneath the notes. When you do a test screening and somebody says, 'Well, I didn't like the love story,' but it was probably just too long.

I think when I start out writing, I always try to write the version of the movie that I want to go see. I don't mean it in a way that ignores the audience, but I really set out to make a movie that I want to see and that, hopefully, other people will want to go see it. So whatever's amusing to me, I guess, I throw it all in there.

Learning to make films is very easy. Learning what to make films about is very hard.