Sam Mendes Quotes

I spent a long time working in the movies to figure out that kind of acting and also how to write and produce for the screen.

I guess once you've been acting for a long time, you glean the great bits of good directors and the bad bits from other directors, and you know the way that you would like to be directed.

I'm not saying I'm a writer, but I've been in movies for a long time, and I think I could write a script for a movie.

For us as writers, it's really important to have songs we believe in - even before sometimes we shoot a scene. If we have a song that's so perfectly designed for a scene on 'Rescue Me,' we'll play it on loud speakers during the shooting. It helps the cameraman and it helps the director, and it helps the actors know what the feel is.

Stage is the ultimate test; I like watching established screen actors on stage to see if they can really do it. But it's great to have a healthy mixture of the two. Film is so technical: there's something very particular about the relationship between you and the camera. It took a long time for me to get good on film.

Any actor working a long time should know how a shot is set up, where to place themselves, how to handle the lines. I'm a member of the crew, like the best boy, the electrician. What I'm good at is making eyes at the camera.

I feel for Veronica Mars so much when I'm watching at home. It is a wonderful story. The writing is consistently funny, biting, charming, heart-wrenching, etc. I also like the look of it. The cinematography - different from any other show.

My tutors at drama school commended and criticised my use of comedy in my acting for a long time at drama school. They said I had a tendency to somehow perform the most tragic of scenes in a slightly flippant way.

I like movies where you feel like it was actually thought through.

It would have been tough for anyone to adapt 'Push' - an amazing but wrenching novel by Sapphire - for the screen, and I think director Lee Daniels made interesting choices, particularly with Precious' fantasies. In my view, some of them work and some do not, but they are definitely provocative directorial choices.

I like pointing the camera at the actors and letting them fight. Don't let the camera do the fighting for you, and don't let the camera give them the adrenaline hit. Let the people in the frame do that.

As a cinematographer or director, I'm always looking for projects that are able to say a lot with the actor's expressions.

That's really the whole point of art - it's to take something commonplace and draw people on a path so that, all of a sudden, they have a new impression of everything around them.

We figured the audience would want good stories, great art, wonderful characters, people you could fall in love with that we would immediately put through hell.

Visually, I want to try everything. But I believe that every shot of my films really expresses what I think about the story and the character. The most important thing is the story, not the images.

The experience of watching great cinema - great art - is life enriching and spiritually uplifting no matter whether it's about as difficult as it gets, like 'Breaking the Waves,' or as light as it gets, like 'Jerry Maguire,' 'Election' or 'Toy Story.'

The scenes in 'The Virgin Suicides' where Elle Fanning is ice skating are really amazing.

Content films necessary don't go by the content, they go by the emotions. Content films are about content whether you want to portray the content or sell it through humour, through seriousness, is a choice of the filmmaker.

I would never suggest that the geography or visual environment of the film is more important than what's going on with the people, but it's a major factor in getting the right tone. Certainly, it influences the actors tremendously.

I believe the most interesting thing to look at in the world is the human face, so that is why I tend to be a little closer to human faces than maybe other directors will be.

I put in a lot of work in film study.

If a film is entertaining, it will work irrespective of anything. It should be entertaining and engaging; otherwise, it becomes a documentary.

I think lighting is a reflection of what is at stake emotionally in a movie.

I'm not very particular about the commercial angle in my films, but entertainment is very important.

I regard the 'Descendants' as a melodrama, and all scenes have been the trappings to increase the element of romance, I thought. In that sense, I am very satisfied and have great respect for the decisions of the writers.