Jason Reitman Quotes

It would be great to be 105 and still making films.

I think anytime you can do something you haven't seen or done in a film before, it's always a great day as an actor.

'Super 8' was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun working with J.J. Abrams, who I think is a kid in a grown man's body, which is a great ingredient for any artist in our business. You have to be a kid at heart to be able to make believe, and his imagination is phenomenal.

I just want to make one really good movie a year. And when I die, to know I was honest as an artist.

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

I make more movies than I see.

The problem with doing a schlocky or big budget studio film is that it wouldn't actually be fun for me. It wouldn't be exciting.

And in movies you must be a gambler. To produce films is to gamble.

I find that all great directors, and I would include Ben Affleck and Clint Eastwood in that, they have great confidence. And with great confidence comes great freedom for the actor.

I liken movies to playing a piano: Sometimes you're playing the chords and different notes with unresolved cadences and playing all major chords that are all over the place, and you're enjoying yourself with a great, simple melody.

Just making a movie the way 'All is Lost' had to be made was a great experience, because it was structured differently than any other film I will make for the rest of my life.

I never considered Miles Davis a perfectionist; I always considered him as an excellence-ist, where deviation is actually kind of cool.

A singer can quit once he or she has made ten great songs; a director can finish once he or she has made five amazing films; a writer just needs to write three great books.

I just want to keep doing things completely different from the other. I just want to keep working with great people, great filmmakers and great actors and just building on that experience.

I look at directing as a sporting event. It's a race, a marathon. It's great when it clicks, which is why I push my crews so hard so we can excel.

I could never be like Hitchcock and do only one kind of movie. Anything that's good is worthwhile.

Balance is the enemy of art.

The thing I have to do as a writer, and that God permits me to do, is that I have to be willing to fail.

'Senna' took five years, 'Amy' took three years. You try and say, 'Look, there's no deadline.' That's important. Just saying, 'We've got to make the film. And once the film's ready, it will be out there.'

When you are making the one you are doing, you think it is the greatest film going. And then you do another one and it is a great film.

I made a film that was impossible to make, but I didn't know it was impossible, and that's how I was able to do it.

I've had some success at writing and directing, and I like it. It's infinitely more creative than just acting, and I have things I want to say and do.

Directors only have instinct to work out of, because there is no formula. Formulas don't work. Actually, if you follow a formula, you will probably end up with a bad movie.

Because I could take this as an opportunity to create something that I pretty much guarantee nobody else was going to create in film.

When we did 'Breaking the Waves,' he had a sign on the wall that said, 'Make mistakes.'