Gulzar Quotes

It is difficult to make movies on your own terms and also to make a film and convince somebody to have faith in it.

Box office success has never meant anything. I couldn't get a film made if I paid for it myself. So I'm not 'box office' and never have been, and that's never entered into my kind of mind set.

I don't make movies because I think audiences will want to go see them.

Since childhood, I'd dreamed of making a film, but producers in France and Germany wanted to make commercial films with chinoiserie. I refused.

The black groups that boycott certain films would do better to get the money together to make the films they want to see, or stay in church and leave us to our work.

If it sells, it sells. If it doesn't sell, I'll go make a movie.

I feel like everyone wants to make a movie that they feel passionate about watching.

I'm a filmmaker; I want to make films. I don't want to sit in a hotel room waiting to make films, and I can control my thing in Denmark; I can make the film I want to make... of course, I have to write a good script, all that, but if I do my job, it will happen.

Often, people who want to make interesting films simply don't have the money to do it.

If you want to make movies you need to think on a micro-micro level and figure out how to make them for nothing with people who really care about your movie and really want to make it.

No, United Artists was a very extraordinary organization, because once they had agreed on the director, they believed in letting him have his way. They trusted me, and that doesn't often happen.

Well, in our industry it's that the movies cost so much money to make they have to appeal to a broad audience. And I think that's part of what will loosen up in the future, as technology makes it cheaper, you'll be able to make films for a more selective audience. I think people will be able to make more personal movies.

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.

I always say that I'm a filmmaker, not a factory. I don't have to churn out films every six months.

Vidhu Vinod Chopra, who has produced my earlier films, is still a part of 'PK' and is presenting it. He is not a hands-on producer - he used to put a certain amount in the bank and give me the cheque book.

When you produce and direct your own film you havethe somewhat consoling feeling that the producer will kill for you.

We try to make films for people [that are] the films that we'd like to see. They're not easy to get made. They're hard to get made. You have to keep the budget low to get them made. But at the end of the day, I don't really worry about competition, because I don't really think of it that way. I don't feel like I'm in a race with anybody.

People say, "How do you get into the British film industry?" There is no British film industry, there are just people making films and finding their own way. It's not like in the States where there are studios and there's an actual infrastructure to it; there's just nothing here. You make it from scratch a lot of the time.

One of the things you have to understand with The Room, I never approached a studio to produce, because I know no one in Hollywood will produce this. I came to Hollywood and I said "I will produce this movie the way I want it."

Persistence is half the battle. That's what I love about independent movies. They don't have to be made. There's no studio with an agenda to set up a franchise like 'Batman' or to make a vehicle for a celebrity actor. My films are made because I love the process.

There is a great tradition of independent filmmaking in the U.S. that I absolutely respect. There's some wonderful stuff that comes out in this country against all the odds.

I consider myself an independent filmmaker.

I'm considered to some degree a successful director working in Hollywood, making films my way but using studio financing. But with almost every single one, I get praised up the wazoo by people who never would have financed the films. It's: "Gee, this movie is so new and different - what do you want to do next?" "This." "Oh, that's too new and different."

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.

I saw Dolce Vita and my mind was blown by it, by the synthesis. I realised I wanted to be a filmmaker and started making films. I was writing screenplays and couldn't get money because my work was so uncommercial.