Bill Plympton Quotes

It's dangerous to think too much about how a film will be received. Filmmaking is not a popularity contest. Some would disagree.

The movies that are made more thoughtfully or made or with more ambition often get just get drowned out by the noise.

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

No matter how big or new they are, I always look for the intention of the filmmaker first. Their intention has to be in the right place.

With Quentin Tarantino, he makes movies imagining himself as the audience. To be specific and true to what he wants resonates to people who like his movies.

I don't really want to do the Hollywood thing. I think you ought to try to say something with your movies.

The most important thing when you do a movie is that you find an audience that really understands what you want to do and is really supportive of it.

We need more extreme movies in Sweden. Personal projects that are necessarily made for a bigger audience. I think it creates a creative lock-up to have the audience as a goal.

I want my movies to be audience experiences. As much as I like Michael Haneke, I'm not going to make a Haneke film. That's just not in my DNA.

The marketing department is really an important part of getting an animated film to work. If the people running it are used to selling live action films and the hard rock music and the sex and all those things... Anything outside that, they just don't know what to do with it.

I don't think Hollywood makes many good films anymore. How many directors can you really trust to have an artistic vision, not a corporate vision or a watered-down communal one?

Studios never put pressure. They know the kind of films I want to make.

I believe that there's good content or bad content. You see interviews when somebody interviews a director of a movie that didn't perform well in the box office, and he says, 'The audience didn't understand my movie.' If people didn't go to buy the ticket, then you did the wrong movie.

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

As a director, you never think about how an audience would respond. You can think about that, but you will never change what you're going to do.

I really believe my films are going to be successful, that I'm making 'The Blair Witch Project' - something that will transcend expectations and resonate with people.

Sure, you can do something frothy and ridiculous, but you should probably be confident that it's going to be a sure-fire hit. Then it's sensible, because it enables you to make smaller movies. But if you make something frothy and ridiculous that doesn't work, it's not worth it.

'Barton Fink' owed something to Roman Polanski. As a director, he always goes beyond the obvious narrative drift.

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.

No film should be meaningless.

It's not about choosing a specific genre; that's not how I go about deciding what movies to make.

I love independent film so much, and that's kind of where I made my mark.

Three of the top six documentaries of all time, grossing, are made by me.

What I'm trying to do is to make films - 'I Origins' is one of them - with the new generation of filmmakers. I want to support that.

I've also shot plenty of films with very small audiences - 'The Sun Also Rises.' I love that film, but I didn't capture the imagination of the audience. I don't know why.