Roger Michell Quotes

It seems that the small movies are a little more risky and cutting-edge. You've got your big commerce and you've got your small films that you're more passionate about.

I'd love to do more independent films.

I rarely see one of the 'summer blockbuster' movies. I'd like to see a stronger focus on smaller, smarter movies.

I often find the smaller, independent films are much more rewarding than the bigger stuff, but you do the bigger stuff because it's a business, and you've got to show your face a bit, get yourself around.

I'm no longer interested in being in big commercial films.

Certainly, the Hollywood cinema, there's almost nothing of interest coming out of there.

It's a really unique situation where you just - you make independent films or you make big blockbuster movies, but it's very rare when all of those ingredients come together, and you can really tell a story that you care about with a character you absolutely love with the people you love making movies with.

In an ideal world, I'd bounce between big projects and no-budget TV dramas with fantastic scripts. A lot of Hollywood films tend to be bloated, bombastic, loud. At the same time, I do like the infrastructure of making a blockbuster; it's like having a big train set.

I'm not trying to be self-serving, but you know, you get to Hollywood, and if you want to make something big and loud and dumb, it's pretty easy. It's very hard to go down there and make a film like 'Sideways,' which I thought was a great film. They don't want to make films like that anymore, even though that film was very successful.

In a perfect world, I could be doing some bigger films and balance that with some independent films because they seem to be the most challenging and unique.

We pay for content that we like, and we like the content we pay for. It's a lot more satisfying to pay $7.50 for Steven Spielberg's next epic than it is to watch my home movies for free. Even for me.

As far as acting in films, there is not much out there that is very interesting to do. The ones that are interesting to me are independent films and they have trouble raising money. With people putting their money into blockbusters, there is not much left for the independents.

We don't make movies for critics. I've done four movies; there's millions upon millions upon millions of people who've paid to see them. Somebody likes them. My greatest joy is to sit anonymously in a dark theater and watch it with an audience, a paying audience.

After I do a big movie I get offered big movies. But I always do the weirdest indie.

Ultimately, the film industry has always pushed out its biggies, and I don't have a problem with that. I just wish that we'd spend more time nurturing the smaller ones.

I personally like to do independent films.

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

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?

I haven't done a lot of studio movies, but studio movies and independent films are always just as fun as each other.

My favorite film is always the one that I most recently worked on.

I think it's important to do smaller films because I think that's where a lot of new things are happening.

Going forward, I would love to work with directors like Rian Johnson and Joss Whedon; people like that who are doing big films but do have really independent voices. That's kind of what I want to focus on, is always working with people with at least an independent point of view, even if it's not an independent film.

I think indie films are really important, because they show the studios and the audiences when they see them, great stories. Really interesting, small stories.

If you have a career like mine, which is so identified with Hollywood, with big studios and stars, you wonder if maybe you shouldn't go off and do what the world thinks of as more personal films with lesser-known people. But I think I've fooled everybody. I've made personal films all along. I just made them in another form.

I don't want to do every independent film offered to me.