Haskell Wexler Quotes

I was born with a crippled leg. I wore a corrective shoes since I was three years old and I still wear them.

Having already used a Fox shock in my Moto Knee, the prosthetic leg I developed, I knew that I would take advantage of Fox's superior suspension dynamics in the Versa Foot as well.

I wouldn't necessarily recommend shooting a feature film on a still camera.

I was told that I would be in a wheelchair for the rest of my life.

Even back in the '90s, I shot certain things on something that wasn't digital then, but it was on VHS with a smaller camera and we would up it to film.

I thought about making movies. It hit me when I was about 14, 15 years old.

Well, this movie I've been working on for a while. I had the idea for the movie like twenty years ago when I was doing 'Empire of the Sun' in 1987 because at that time that's when all these Vietnam movies were being made and my friends and I were going on auditions for these Vietnam movies and my friends were getting them and going away to fake boot camps.

I'm never critical or judgmental about whether or not a movie is any good. The way I look at it, if several hundred people got together every day for a year or so - a number of then willing to put on heavy makeup, wear clothes that weren't their own and pretend to be people other than themselves - and their whole purpose for doing all this was to entertain me, then I'm not gonna start worrying about whether or not they did a good job. The effort alone was enough to make me happy.

Touch a man who can't walk up right, and that lame man, he's gonna fly.

The helicopter was a U.S. Navy helicopter. There were no civilian helicopters available to film companies, so they just made some stuff out of two-by-four wood. And I would straddle a two-by-four out from the helicopter with a camera and what we call a high hat, which is a low metal stand.

I've made quite a number of movies like Castaway and a few others where I'm the only guy in the movie and the only place to be is right next to the camera in costume ready to go in order to get it. The years, and more specifically probably the four months prior to beginning shooting, is where the big preparation is that the director does because I knew we were going to get on the set. And the good news is, if you're the boss, if it ain't good, you don't use it. You just cut it out.

Working in 3D I didn't experience much of a difference, except that the cameras are very big so they can't be moved around with as much ease. It was more like, when you've seen photos of cameras from the 1930s being moved around with these huge cranes. So there was something quite sort of old-fashioned about it almost.

If I have an idea I want to put in a movie, I know what camera will make that look best, and I have ideas for future projects and stuff I'd like to build for those. I think it's just part of how I work, though.

I've been producing for 13 years. I've made a string of joyful movies with positive messages about comedy, love and romance.

Movies in Hollywood now, for the past 20 or 30 years, are made mainly by lawyers or agents.

I have never made a movie that's attracted a 14-year-old boy.

Most times you do a movie every place except for what the camera sees is just a mess with the lights, people, and cameras so you get used to it. There is no way to shut that out, there is always a constant reminder of how many people it takes, what is going on and how many elements that goes into making this scene look right.

When you are on the set, you have different departments - you got camera, sound, props, hair, makeup, catering, executives. Imagine each one of those are spokes on the wagon wheel. All the spokes come into a hub: the hub is the director. The wood the spokes go into are distribution and promotion; the steel wheel around the hub is the film. None of these have anything in common with each other.

I lost an arm on my last trip home.

Anything involving the camera, you're passionate about. Because there's no movies without it.

This is all so exciting I've decided to keep making one movie every 36 years.

It was a very good experience. It wasnt just to make a movie, it was my life. I was employed at The Lord of the Rings for a year and a half.

Pretty early on in making the first movie I realized that this is what I wanted to do. I felt like by that time I just found my niche, like this is what I was supposed to be doing. So I completely submerged myself into the world of watching movies, making my own movies, buying video cameras and lights. When I wasn't making a movie, I was making my own movies. When I wasn't making movies, I was watching movies. I was going back and studying film and looking back at guys that were perceived as great guys that I can identify with. It just became my life.

You do a movie. However long it lasts, it begins and it ends in a relatively short period of time. In a given period of time, let's say a year, you can have three, four, or five different experiences which is exciting.

I'd like to use IMAX. The problem with IMAX is that it's a very loud camera. It's a very unreliable camera. Only so much film can be in the camera. You can't really do intimate scenes with it.