Robert De Niro Quotes

Making a big Hollywood film that really affects people is as hard as making a small movie on a credit card.

Luck, I never looked to make difficult movies on purpose. You make the films you can make.

Everybody is always trying to make the best movie they can. It's a process.

A film goes through so many hands, that by the time it's done, it might not resemble what you thought you were making.

Hollywood is a deeply odd place. There are so many factors that have to go perfectly, so many schedules and visions that have to snap together for a film even to be made, much less be good.

Both as a filmmaker and as a fan I love the behind-the-scenes stuff, I like it even more than deleted scenes frankly. Especially when you're happy with the movie and you're proud of it, those deleted scenes give you also a sense of the making of the film and the process through which you end up with the final product.

I think making small movies reminds you of the effort. When you make big movies, the effort is to fight for freedom. When you make small movies, the effort is making the day, making the budget, and it's great, too.

Anybody that makes films knows the film is never finished. It's abandoned or it's ripped out of your hands, and it's thrown into the marketplace, never finished. It's a very rare experience where you find a filmmaker who says, "That's exactly what I wanted. I got everything I needed. I made it just perfect. I'm going to put it out there."

I'm a big fan of the Pixar movies, and Ed Catmull, who wrote a book about his experiences producing them, talks about how it takes three or four years to get it right.

It's so funny when people who are not used to making movies get into it. You just can't believe how insufferably boring it is. Waiting around and doing these lines over and over and finally having to go in and loop the lines and dub them.

And Paul Moravec, not being a theater person, would always trust me when I said things that I am like, "you're going to need another 10 seconds of music year to get them across the stage." But I always knew that the people were going to be coming to hear his music of which my words are going to be a part. It was clear that he wanted to go and direction A., and I wanted to go and direction B. We would've gone and direction A. That's the most important piece of advice I can give to anybody who finds themselves in an opera, or musical comedy situation like that.

You do a film and you have hopes for it, and you read it, and you see it one way in your head, and you shoot it, and it'll always change from what you started out. Sometimes it turns out better, sometimes it turns out; I don't know, but as movies go I've never experienced seeing and likening what I've read, and I liked what I read.

No film ever ends up exactly as you would like it to, but with minor exceptions, THX came out pretty much as I had visualized it, thanks to some excellent assistance -- and a whole lot of luck.

What's interesting as a director, and even studio executives don't understand this, is that if you're directing a $200 million movie with six million people, it's the same as directing a $25,000 movie with three people. The director's job is, "You stand there and do that," or "This is the shot I want." The logistics change, but the job remains the same. And I enjoy the job.

When you do a movie, it's like going on a journey. It's really like the director is the captain of the ship, and that energy, everybody feels.

I always wanted to make this film or another film. I thought the worst thing you could do was to react to Slumdog's success in some way. I thought it would be really foolish.

And so you try your best. Sometimes you go in with one thing, with one desire and come out with something else. In the case of 'The Aviator' it was to create a Hollywood spectacle, but by about the second or third week of shooting you just want to literally survive it. Because don't forget, I also go through the editing process too, and when the film is released I have to talk about it. So, I take all of that very seriously.

Derek Jarman shared the responsibility for making the film. He didn't necessarily know what he wanted - he knew what he didn't want - but you had to keep coming up with stuff.

You never really know what the director has got in his mind as far as the scene visually and art direction wise, etc. Even if you do, sometimes there's a side of things that don't necessarily gel the way people intend. So there a bit of a mystical entity, film.

Shooting a movie can be so tedious. You're trying to get 20 different angles on the same swing. You never get into a rhythm. But I took it very seriously.

Each film is difficult, in its own particular way. There's a unique set of challenges on every movie.

I've always believed in making films that you make the little decisions with your head, but you make the big decisions with your heart.

The Cable Guy was underbudgeted, so it was always a debate about whether we could have more days or certain things that we needed, because the budget was determined before the script was written. So that made it a hard production on everybody. But it's also a funny thing, because it's one of those movies that cost $40 million to make and made $100 million around the world, but at the time, it seemed like a disaster that it didn't make hundreds of millions of dollars, because Jim was on such a tear. But it was actually a successful movie.

When I look at a body it gives me choice of what to put in a painting, what will suit me and what won't. There is a distinction between fact and truth. Truth has an element of revelation about it. If something is true, it does more than strike one as merely being so.

When you try to be true to the script, changes occur. A script is there to show us a certain direction. But when you actually have the actors in and you start shooting the movie, you have the actor say a line and it doesn't sound right so you change it and make it different. It's the script that gives birth to these changes and the more you try to stay true to the script, the more that happens.