Brandon Jay McLaren Quotes

I feel like Canadian movies should be as good or better than the competition because of the talent we have here.

People in Scotland appreciate homegrown talent, but it's getting harder and harder to get films made in Britain.

My goal is to get a real film industry started in Washington. An actual one, not where features come to town and shoot second unit for a few days. I would love to get something started here. Hire local crews. People could work year-round and raise their families here.

Canada's a small market. I think sometimes we do too much of supporting American stories in Hollywood and not enough supporting our own.

It's not so important to me where I work. A lot of good writers and directors and actors come out of Hollywood, so obviously it would be great to work there, but there's some great stuff coming out of Britain, so I'm going to see what comes from all angles.

I don't think the idea of working in Hollywood really exists anymore. I think you work in films, and where the film is shot is where it's shot. The studio system doesn't really exist.

My plan was to stay in Canada to make films.

The director is a Canadian, Jeff Stephenson, and any time I get a script that has any Canadian component, I'm always immediately much more interested.

As for the Canadians - good actors and good directors are sometimes taken by the American market, you know, if they're good enough.

There's no big budget Canadian movie. Whatever movies are big budget in Canada come from the States. Or also have States financing. Everything's pretty small.

The trend now is to shoot in Canada because it's cheaper, and they don't care what the location is.

I grew up on movie sets, getting to see storytelling happen up close.

I don't have an anti-Hollywood feeling. It's just I'm a New Zealander. I was born in New Zealand, and it's where my house is, and my family goes to school there. My interest is to remain in my homeland and make films. I don't really want to relocate myself to other countries in the world to work.

For every big American movie I've done where I was the supporting guy, I've gone back home to Canada to do supporting movies where I was the lead.

Being on a movie set is wonderful experience, but it's a bubble - it isn't real life.

I feel like Canadian movies should be as good or better than the competition because of the talent we have here. Someone like Ryan Gosling shouldn't have to come back here because it's a Canadian movie. He should want to come back because some of the best movies are being made here.

John is a cottage industry in Baltimore and the city opens its doors for him whenever he is making a new film.

Can you imagine what it would be like if all the Aussie film talent was able to make Australian stories?

I started acting when I was 13 in New York. Worked there for a couple years, then auditioned for a show there that was going to be filming here. Ended up coming out, getting the job and just staying.

Suddenly I was writing a lot of screenplays, and I was no long in New York, so I stopped acting in plays, and it just became too tricky to find a part to play, either in a play or a film that coincided with my schedule writing and or directing.

But you know, there's always a danger nowadays that films are gonna be brought up to Canada for budget reasons. And that's something that really concerns me.

I think the movie business and film crews are a little bit like the circus, in that we travel around like a pack and we're a big family for a finite period of time. We roll into someplace, cause a bunch of damage, and then roll out.

I've had some of the best craft services on independent movies, actually, because they get more creative, generally, with a smaller budget. The work is still the same. I didn't really notice the difference other than I was getting dressed behind a curtain, basically.

I'd like to do a film in Canada, but it's too difficult. National Film Board funding takes too long, and there's too much paperwork; by the time the film is approved the topic is dead and gone.

Britain is producing some of the worst films in the world. Our film industry is desperate to be part of America, and we just churn out flaccid imitations of bad films over there.