Jonathan Demme Quotes

It's not a film-maker's job to explain his technique, but to tell his story the best way he can.

I don't approach films purely in context of genre.

I always try to make popular films. Even in black-and-white and silent.

What I like to do with every film is to bring a form, like a cinematographic proposal. If you watch 'S21,' it's a form; 'Duch, Master of the Gates of Hell' is a different proposal.

It's much easier to make a movie with kind of stylistic pyrotechnics because you can hide behind that if there's a gap in the story.

One thing that I think works in 'Casablanca' and which I've lectured a lot about - in terms of what I've been trying to achieve as a designer - is the film's creation of its own form of reality.

I want to make movies that I want to see, and what I miss and I'm not seeing.

I believe realism is nothing but an analysis of reality. Film scripts have a synthetical constitution.

But actually I make films that I think are extremely sophisticated and cinematic.

I realised that there's a more muscular approach to film-making that I found very inspiring.

In movies, you shoot out of sequence, so the issue of reality is really taken out of it.

I'm not coming from film school. I learned cinema in the cinema watching films, so you always have a curiosity. I say, 'Well, what if I make a film in this genre? What if I make this film like this?'

European films were what it was about for me - the sensations I needed, the depth, the storytelling, the characters, the directors, and the freedom that you can't really find in American films.

People talk about making art films - experimental films. I can make an art film every day of the week. Nothing to it. What's difficult is to combine a commercial film with art.

Their films would probably be better if they'd seen a few more films, which runs counter to this idiotic theory that you run the risk of being influenced if you see too much.

I look at the film as an opportunity to see some bountifully creative minds do something that I could not do - tell the story with images. I can't wait to see what they do.

I hope this doesn't sound pretentious, but I very often like the way Europeans make movies. I think sometimes that don't they care about having to clean certain things.

The whole point of film for me is that it's such a joy. It's such a wonder. The possibilities are literally endless in terms of what you can creatively do.

I think that in France, we really admire American films, we admire their drive, we admire the modernity and ellipsism in the film and the writing and the style of acting, and we look at them perhaps in a way to see what we can steal from them, too, to make our own films more modern.

I am interested in seeing if you can create on film pieces that feel contemporary and urgent.

My films express me, my sense of rhythm, my sense of impact, my sense of kinetic energy. I like films to move, but I like also clear storytelling and characters, and most of all, I like authentic emotion.

Painting, music, photography, and visual art have been creative forms of expression for me for decades.

I'm not a big fan of shooting something that looks like it could belong in any movie. I'm not a fan of, okay, 'wide shot, wide shot, medium shot, close-up, close-up - we'll figure it out in post.' I hate that.

With a lot of these social realist films, the first thing you do is drain the color.

When a director shifts gears as often as does Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, the man behind the emotionally rich debut film 'Amores Perros,' you may wonder if he knows what he wants.