Edward Burns Quotes

If Barbra Steisand wants to make a picture called 'My Pink Fingernail,' the studios will go, 'Gee, Barbra, what a wonderful idea! Money is no object! Take two years in preproduction and write the music, and you'll direct.'

Isn't that the definition of a star? Someone who can get a film made?

I turn up in Los Angeles every now and then, so I can get some big money films in order to finance my smaller money films.

I've talked about this a lot, but 'The Witch' took four years to finance because there were certain compromises I wouldn't make.

I do believe that there are some films that cannot be made without stars.

Independent films now, they want to give you $2 million to make it, 21 days to shoot it and they want 10 movie stars in it.

I put my films together in Europe and it kick-starts the financing when I'm attached as an actress. It makes it easier to move forward.

A lot of times, I relied on connections through my agency, just for financing and things like that. Even when I'm looking for a million and a half dollars to do a small film, there can always be hold-ups, because it's a large amount of money for some people, and it's a small amount of money for other people. In any case, it's significant enough to where you have to jump through a lot of hoops to get it to happen. Sometimes, the people who are helping you can drop the ball. And, of course, the reason agents want you to do bigger projects is that they make a bigger cut.

On Lock, Stock, we didn't know where the money for shooting the next day was coming from.

When I tried to get 'Stargate' made, I took it to every studio in Hollywood and every studio said, 'Sci-fi is dead. It's a dead genre. No one wants to see science fiction anymore.' And I had to go and raise the money independently to make that movie.

The great thing I think when you do independents is that people are really there for the same reason. They're not there because they got a lot of money and they want to just go home and get it over with. They're there because they believe in the script or the director or the cast or whatever it is, and they want to make it work.

I have come close to producing films. But generally by the time they hit the screen, there's about 50 people with producer credits, so what's the point. I usually find scripts I like with no money attached and take them to producers that I know and try to raise finance.

I have a bunch of movies that are, like, two minutes from being green-lit, or that they've maybe even told me are green-lit. But I never believe it until I see the money.

It would have been impossible to get 'The Verdict' off the ground without Paul Newman obviously, but today without any star, kind of a dramatic piece would be very tough.

It's very difficult to raise money, especially in the United States, for independent movies.

When you do bigger films, the financiers take more risks.

I've never made a film that lost money.

My name can raise money on a small-budget film.

I suppose the real cult things now are independent films made for a million pounds.

You could go out with a camcorder tomorrow and make a movie with virtually no money, but promoting a tiny low-budget movie costs $20 million. And the money they spend on the big movies is astronomical.

I think producers are more interested in backing concepts than directors and writers. I don't think that's the right way of making a decision about whether you're going to back a film or not.

The film, even when we were making it in that budget range, which was really a coup - we got it made because we pitched it to the studio head, Joe Roth.

The traditional Hollywood system is pretty rigid, but the film scene in, say, South Africa is booming with a lot of possibilities. If you have the cameras and reasonable capital, you can put your film in theatres next to 'Guardians of the Galaxy.' A great example of that was Kagiso Lediga's film 'Blitz Patrole.'

You can get money and make a really cheap movie. You can, from independent financers who are just giving you money to support artists. This is what was happening in the '90s, and I was very fortunate to be a part of that.

I'm telling you, man, after I did 'Land of the Dead,' which Mark Canton produced, Universal picked it up, and I had to use stars. I didn't think I needed stars - Dennis Hopper was in it. I loved him. We hung out. I loved him, but his cigar budget was more than we paid for the entire budget of 'Night of the Living Dead.'