Penelope Spheeris Quotes

I never intended to be a documentary filmmaker. I think I became a documentary filmmaker because I had trouble writing, and I had trouble finishing things.

People say to me, "You make fantastic films" and I say, "No, I make documentaries.

So I do tend to do documentaries where I can move in and out of them.

I never wanted to be a film director but after this experience I really loved it. I would love to do more documentaries but it's difficult to find backing for them.

One of the reasons to do documentaries is that. There's more sense of creating something, more sense of my own soul in the documentaries than in movies, because I don't write the movies I do.

When I started my filmmaking journey 17 years ago, I honestly didn't know what a documentary film was.

I love the idea of documentaries. I love seeing documentaries, and I love making them. Documentaries are incredibly easy to shoot. The ease with which you can hear something's going on, somebody's going to be somewhere: That sounds so interesting. Pick up your camera and go.

For a documentary filmmaker, I do very well.

I did a lot of violent junk just because I needed the money - alimony movies, you might call them - and then I decided to start turning down the junk scripts and wait for something better, no matter how long.

You do the one film that you think is terrible, but it's a big studio film and you hope you'll get another job because of it, because blah blah blah, whatever it is. You know that you hate it, you just couldn't care less if it got made because it's not something in a million years you'd go and see yourself. And it ends up being shite and you just knew it was shite to begin with, and it doesn't do you any favors at all if someone thought you were in another shite film. So I decided it doesn't get me anywhere being cynical. It's not that I want to be.

The independent films are really where I kind of come from and where I feel comfortable. It's never been about the blockbusters and making a huge tonne of money. It's always been about wanting to do projects about the things that I think are important to be out there.

I have a lot of films that I haven't gotten made, and that continues to trouble me. But someday, some way or another, I think I will. It's all about timing. There's a moment when you're hot and studios will make your next film, and then there's a moment when you're really cold, and they couldn't care less what you want to do next. That's when you have to recede and make lower-budgeted films.

When I think about the new film, I think I can do whatever I want with fiction, but the more documentary it is, the better it will be because that's what I'm good at. I'm good at observing people's behavior and putting these unspoken things into movie contexts in ways that other people can sometimes miss.

A lot of the distinctions that we make between drama and documentary are spurious. We're deeply confused about these issues. About the difference between the two, about where documentary ends and drama begins.

On "Tonight" I think I was torn dreadfully between writing what I wanted to write, but keeping it in a style that would follow up what I had just done. That's where I feel I was untrue to myself as an artist . . . that album and, to a lesser extent, "Never Let Me Down."

I have a great respect for actors like Clint Eastwood, who's a wonderful director. I think two pictures that I directed were not successful, so I decided not to make any more.

Obviously there's something very seductive about movies, which can be attractive in a bad way if you're doing them for the wrong reasons — for money, or for fame. I hope I won't ever do that. I don't feel at home in L.A., I feel like I'm on holiday. It's nice to dip your feet in occasionally, but I think it's probably quite unhealthy to spend too much time there at once.

There are a lot of celebrities that I think can get a little bit distracted by the way that our society views celebrity. All of a sudden, the film becomes about, "Come see this celebrity!" I'm not interested in that. I want to see a story.

I would love to work with Guillermo del Toro and J.J. Abrams. I think they are creative geniuses that are constantly producing great work, and they're two people that I would just love to work with.

When you start on a new film, no matter how many you've done before that, I think I've done close to 80 films, but it's always kind of a fun adventure.

I'd love to be a director-for-hire and get a nice paycheck and captain one of those big ships, but I think studios mistakenly think I want to write what I direct - which I don't. I write out of desperation, because I never get a script I like, other than "Nebraska." It's a matter of: What's the screenplay? Is it intelligent? Is it human? I don't care what genre, what scale. I'm here for the movies.

I think my home is in that sort of the part of cinema that's disappeared is where I lived, that sort of mid-budget you know, drama. I suppose that's what I am known for.

I can't do movies where you start thinking "Where's the commercial appeal? How are we going to market this?" It's not that kind of party.

There are enough bad films coming out of this town already without the process being more democratized. I'm a guy who loves democracy. I'm all for democratizing any process, but I think there is a price to pay for that.

I want people to feel that they've gotten to know the people in the film a little bit, gotten to see Pine Ridge in ways they haven't seen before. I think that's a good start.