Steve Erickson Quotes

I'm interested in the impact my movies have on people and how it affects them, and what they like and what they don't like - and what they take away from it. What leaves an impression, you know?

The great art of films does not consist of descriptive movement of face and body but in the movements of thought and soul transmitted in a kind of intense isolation.

'Apocalypse Now' does not alienate us or deconstruct itself. In fact, it welcomes us in.

TV is tricky. You can do some stuff and people will tune out and never tune back in. It's sort of like putting a bad taste in somebody's mouth. Some people may not ever tune in again. And then there's some people that will tune in just to tune in and see what's gon' happen.

Movies alone have the hideous capacity to do everything for you. So in directing movies, you have to figure how to leave things out - because when you leave things out, you evoke the imaginative participation of the audience.

The chemistry of a pair on screen is known only when the audience reacts to it.

People need to start to think about the messages that they send in the movies.

My fear in converting it to 3-D is that people will say, 'Oh, it's the 3-D 'Clash of the Titans.' No, it's 'Clash of the Titans,' the movie, and then, on top of that, you have the 3-D conversion. The 2-D movie works as well as the 3-D movie. I want to make sure that people like the 2-D version.

When a film is created, it is created in a language, which is not only about words, but also the way that very language encodes our perception of the world, our understanding of it.

I think that the cinema is a physical thing. What I'm looking for is creating a physical shock with the audience. I don't care of the meaning. I don't care of the idea. I don't want to say something. I want to make a 'shock physique.'

I love films like 'Deliverance' where you can watch it over and over again and decode all of its many different meanings.

From my very first movie, what was my concentration, my inspiration, was I didn't want to narrate something, I didn't want to tell a story. I wanted to show something, I wanted for them to make their own story from what they were seeing.

I am very conscious of the viewer because that's where the art takes place. My work really strives to put the viewer in a certain kind of emotional state.

I focus on the elements of a movie that are meant to invisibly affect me as a viewer. The edges. As an author, I'm aware of how the subconscious things can pluck at a reader's emotions, and I love it when filmmakers do the same.

Kubrick has a divining rod for the concealed, alienating secrets of characters.

Emotionally, light very much influences, I feel, the audience. It's not something that most audience members are conscious of, which is a good thing, because it means as filmmakers, we have the opportunity to gently control an audience into feeling a certain way.

I saw the police thriller The Blue Lamp' and remember realizing the power that Dirk Bogarde as the gangster exerted over the audience simply by his expressions in the close-ups. I could see how the people around me reacted to him and realized that I wanted to have the same effect.

People say women's wrestling sucks and nobody wants to see it, but every time there are storylines and they invest in the women, people react and love it.

In entertainment, if you have a message in a film, no one wants to be spoon-fed the message. No one wants to be told how to feel. At least, I don't.

I always say the movie came out good if they want another one. That always tells me that people really liked the movie.

You listen to the audience. The audience is wrong individually and always right collectively. If they don't laugh, it isn't funny. If they cough, it isn't interesting. If they walk out, you are in trouble.

Many people say to me, "I saw [Miral] and it really stayed with me. I woke up the next day and really thought about it, and have been thinking about it for awhile." That was my goal.

We're paid to care. That's what actors get their money for. But the main goal is not for the actors to be frustrated at the end of the show, but for the audience to be throwing their shoes at the television set. That's what we're trying for.

I don't want people leaving the theater depressed after my movies. I want them angry.

In the seven or eight years we were together, we were never together.