Atom Egoyan Quotes

More personal films, you could make them, but your budgets would be cut down.

A film like 'Good Night And Good Luck,' you make that for $7 million because you know it's a black-and-white film, and it's not an easy sell. If you make it for $7 million, then everybody can have a chance to make a little bit of money, and you get to make the film you want to make.

Reservoir Dogs is a small film, and part of its charm was that it was a small film. I'd probably make it for $3 million now so I'd have more breathing room.

I think I had the most fun making a movie with 'Dedication,' just because you knew that it was a passion project for everyone involved. We had X amount of days to shoot New York in the cold. No trailers. Just sort of kind of doing it guerilla style in a way.

When I got back from shooting 'Deception,' I was under contract with NBC, so I can't really do anything.

See, a painting is much cheaper than making a film. And photography is, you know, way cheap. So if I get an idea for a film, there are many ways to get it together and go realise that film. There's really nothing to be afraid of.

I love doing short films because they're much more intimate and there's far less waiting around than on the bigger films.

I believe in making movies very inexpensively; I think that way too much money is spent on making movies. Enough movies are being made, but not enough experimental ones.

I love doing features, but it's a very different ballgame. Sometimes I yearn for short films again, working with a small team, getting my hands on the clay.

Many people came out and said, 'Boy I'd love to make a film that way.' Well, borrow some money, get some people together - you can get people to work for nothing, just treat them right, treat them as human beings, not stars, give them all an equal share, make them feel a part of what they're doing. There's no big secret to it.

You just never know when movies are going to take off or not. The lucky thing about this was that it didn't cost a lot of money, and therefore there wasn't loads of pressure on me.

Plan B is really a little garage band of three people, and our mandate has been to help get difficult material, that might not otherwise get made, to the screen and to work with directors we respect.

Filmmakers, they tell me they want to make movies. I say, 'Good, go out, buy a $500 camera, get some friends and make a movie. Don't go to Hollywood. Stay wherever you are.'

If you want to make movies you need to think on a micro-micro level and figure out how to make them for nothing with people who really care about your movie and really want to make it.

I just want to make films that have enough of a budget to pull off high-level imagery but also have a budget that is low enough that I can do what I want.

When we did Wayne's World, it was 14 million dollars and they didn't bug us too much because they just thought it was some little movie that nobody was ever going to see. We showed them.

You can have 10 bucks to 10 million bucks and if you got a crew, imagination and a lot of people willing to turn in some work next to nothing, you going to have a feature. But you can't get beyond how expensive marketing the movie is, it's so crushing.

You have these big $200 and $300 million movies with special effects, and I've always thought, 'Gee, why don't we make 30 movies instead of one $300 million movie?' Let's shake it up a bit; wouldn't that be a better bet? Evidently not.

At the end of the day, the less money you have, the easier it is to make a movie.

Most people who've had a big hit movie like 'Paranormal Activity,' the next thing they say is, 'I want to make a $100 million movie.' I have no interest in making more expensive movies.

My dream is just to make zero-budget movies for the rest of my life, because I love that environment.

I like shooting locations just because too much control on the stage can be a bad thing.

With 'Sweetback,' I just put it together a little bit at a time. I didn't do it on anybody's grant. I did it like any other young executive - by cheating and stealing!

How can you compare 'Hollywood Shuffle,' financed through the director's credit cards, and 'Apocalypse Now?' You have to take into consideration the conditions under which it was made.

I always, as a firm rule, make my movies based on how inexpensively I can make them because that means the more freedom I'm going to have.