Whit Stillman Quotes

The gritty indie films are a lot rarer than the films that aspire to fill multiplexes.

If you make action movies, the critics will savage you, and then your movies are outdated the following week with the new wave of special effects.

I grew up in England, and at the time, cinema was very heavy arthouse cinema, and there was no one making movies that were designed to be in multiplexes.

You want every film that you make to do well, not just indie films in general.

No studio picks up the phone after seeing 'Dogtooth' and goes, like, 'We have the next superhero movie.' Though if one did, that would be an interesting studio to work with.

Today films are made to cater to commercial markets created by multiplexes, not for those who enjoy good cinema.

The effort always remains that my new film outdoes my last in terms of performance and gets better box office success. Box office is the sole reason why I do films.

Entertainment and escapism - those are the bigger money-making films today.

If you get something like 'Avatar,' it opens up a lot of big blockbuster doors.

In Tamil and Telugu, I have to do mainstream commercial films. Irrespective of what I want to do, the audience wants to see me in that 'mass' space.

We make movies for the cineplex. They're designed for wide release. They're designed to be seen by a lot of people and eventually make money.

I don't see many explosions or ten-car crashes in the course of my life, so I don't put them into my movies. I would love to live in a society where 'My Dinner with Andre' made $100,000,000. Then I would be in the mainstream. I could do that stuff easier than I could do 'Meatballs.'

I've made movies where people say it's their favourite, but they don't take it seriously because it just didn't seem to break through commercially.

The distribution systems and the cinemas have adopted to the blockbusters, and they now get their main income from selling popcorn, and if you don't make a film that sells popcorn, it's very hard to get it out there.

I am not a cult director at all. I make Hollywood movies.

When my second film 'Dus' released, I was still getting compliments for 'Tum Bin' because it was a hit on satellite channels.

I don't think there has been a huge shift. Most of the films still focus on Salman Khan, Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan, Akshay Kumar, etc. The percentage of films that have someone like a Kangana Ranaut shining in it is really low.

I believe in good films and bad films. Box-office business and all is my husband's section. Sometimes I really get surprised when good films don't do well... Sometimes you are really shocked when an average film does very well.

Whenever we actors become part of a Bollywood film, there is a certain pressure of earning a box office success.

You do sequels because they are tent poles. They open well, and they hold the tent up. But in between, you make a movie you respect.

I am not against doing commercial cinema at all.

It is good that people are experimenting with cinema. They are trying to do serious and soulful cinema but such films don't stay in theatres for over a week. People ultimately go and watch Salman, Shah Rukh and Amir Khan films.

Hollywood is a world where the only thing that gets green-lit is something that made money the last year.

I would never make a film because I think it's going to be a box-office success.

I think of 'Beyond The Clouds' very fondly. Yes, it has not been seen by a lot of people in theatres. I had anticipated more people would watch it. But that has to do with something I don't know well: marketing. A lot of people didn't even know that it was a Hindi film.