Steve Buscemi Quotes

If I'm going to do a big film, I'm very choosy about what I do, because I think I want to continue - in fact I'm sure I want to continue - to stay in the realm of independent films with directors and writers who are just emerging with new ideas and a different vision that hasn't really been expressed yet.

I believe that independent film making is the last frontier of creative expression available. So I'm always willing to lend a helping hand to a young film maker who's just getting into the business.

Here are the good things about independent films: They do the more interesting, chancy scripts. They're run by love.

I am an independent film-maker first and foremost. I have always cut my own cloth.

Being an indie queen, people think I have all these choices. Like I've just been sitting around waiting for the best indie film that I deem acceptable.

It was always my dream to be a director. A lot of it had to do with controlling my own destiny, because as a young actor you feel at everyone's disposal. But I wanted to become a leader in the business.

I was making a lot of independent movies before the independent movement.

Studios never put pressure. They know the kind of films I want to make.

You end up giving up half your salary every time you make a movie because you need the money to make the movie you have in your head.

We need less perfect but more free films.

As a director, my job is to spend money, and the producer's is to save money. Masoom, Bandit Queen and the first Queen Elizabeth have been my most uncompromised films.

I'm very strongly in favor of the auteur theory.

Working with David Cronenberg or Darren Aronofsky or even Steven Soderbergh isn't really like a typical Hollywood movie. These are true artists, and have a certain amount of freedom when they work, and they're more like independent filmmakers making their way through big studios.

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

The cool thing about those small-budget movies is that there's a tremendous amount of freedom the filmmakers have since there's less money at stake.

I don't see many explosions or ten-car crashes in the course of my life, so I don't put them into my movies. I would love to live in a society where 'My Dinner with Andre' made $100,000,000. Then I would be in the mainstream. I could do that stuff easier than I could do 'Meatballs.'

The film-school mantra is that if you don't tell your own stories, nobody will.

I love independent film so much, and that's kind of where I made my mark.

I'll put it this way: with the kind of films that I do - creatively driven, with interesting directors and writers - I don't feel the need to work with the super established, top-tier directors that are out there.

Films are a director's medium. We're all stemming from the director.

I'd love more production houses to encourage artists to create what they want and not just churn things out.

Movies are not an art form where you get to kind of sit in your art gallery and paint, you know? You don't do that. You're spending a lot of somebody else's money.

In America, I don't think you have the creative freedom that I'm used to. Traditionally, it's a producer's cinema here.

I have always believed that facilitating good, unusual content should be one of my prerogatives as someone who has spent half his life in cinema.

I do love directing. I'm only comfortable working in the independent film arena for a very small budget where I have creative control and I can put my stamp on it.