Whit Stillman Quotes

An author entices the readers with their words, and it is painful for them to even lose a sentence. But films and books are two different mediums and should be dealt differently. What works in a book might not work for a film. When I saw 'Anna Karenina' on screen, I didn't like it at all, whereas 'The Godfather' was legendary.

Lots of movies don't kind of work as well as they do on the page.

I bought the book, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I paid to have it made into a play and I played in it for six months. I came back and I tried to make it into a movie, without success.

I really enjoy working on adaptations.

When I read the book [The Adderall Diaries] I loved it, and I maybe had an inkling that there was a lot of good material in there. I didn't quite know at the time how to adapt it into a film, but I hoped I would figure it out one day.

When I say that it's taken us [with Luca Guadagnino ] 11 years to make this film, what I mean is that it was 11 years ago that we started to talk about a kind of cinema that we wanted to make together.

I have a lot of books optioned. This one sat around for a while - part of that was just because I was trying to figure it out, and I didn't realize I needed Pam to figure it out - but I'm not somebody that likes to option books and then sit on them.

I've made movies that were adaptations and I've been kind of frustrated by the process because, you know that old axiom, 'It's never as good as the book'? It's often true because nothing competes with your own imagination. When you're reading a book and you imagine something in your head, nothing's going to compete with that.

I have devoted 30 years of research to how creative people live and work, to make more understandable the mysterious process by which they come up with new ideas and new things. [...] If I had to express in one word what makes their personalities different from others, it's complexity. They show tendencies of thought and action that in most people are segregated. They contain contradictory extremes; instead of being an "individual", each of them is a "multitude".

I worked as hard to write the worst film of the year as I did to write the best film of the year.

A good adaptation of your book is worth it because it is such a wonderful experience to see your world translated onto the screen.

Normal people do not create art.

Of course, you do not do any research: you have to go there and do your film. It's not that I would travel there before without a camera and spend half a year on one of those volcanoes and then come back with a camera. You have to have some sort of a clear mindset.

It's very hard sometimes when you can't crack something or can't solve something and you keep trying and trying and you know it's falling a little bit short. That's very hard, but then when you finally do it, it's very rewarding and the process is good too, I like working with people this way.

Movies are hard to make, and you have to work toward a common ethic and do your best. You don't want to work with people who don't care or who are acting out some neurotic, crazy thesis on the set.

I'm asked all the time, "Doesn't it feel great to finish the novel?" And the answer to that is, "No." It's sort of a loss to stop a 10-year project, which is an imaginary project in the sense that it's a work of my imagination. The people who I've lived with for 10 years in my imagination are now sort of defunct. To lose them is rather a mournful process - it's not a relief.

I ain't the first on the list that people are sending scripts to. I'm very lucky. I've managed to put myself in the position with some directors, who will be calling me directly, and we're working on things and talking about things, but that's on a purely creative level.

I started writing it six and a half years ago, so the landscape has changed a lot in that time.

Cameron Crowe is someone who I've admired for so long, and I've been friends with him for many years, and I've wanted to work with him so badly that I just never stopped bothering him about writing a script that would be for a pilot.

I think, as the writer, you're always going to mourn something [left out of a film]. But you also just want to know there's a good reason for it being left out. On the whole, you want to give something to somebody creative. The worst thing you can do is say, "Here, be creative, but do it like I want you to do it." I was always very mindful of that.

Before I undertake a lengthy project, I have usually given much thought to it over a period of years. My files are filled with likely subjects - which perhaps, one day, I will develop.

I started working on how I would direct this a year before we started shooting "All We Had" and I was prepping, acting, and directing sort of at the same time. I knew that I didn't want to hold people up on set.

I don't go into any album with a concept or a deliberate direction. It's more letting the best music that really appeals to me at the time, the best songs that I find after many months and years of search and sifting through my collection, and asking radio people and journalists. It's really an ongoing search that's as much daunting as it is somewhat exciting.

It was a very good experience. It wasnt just to make a movie, it was my life. I was employed at The Lord of the Rings for a year and a half.

To tell you the truth, I'm not unhappy about it. I'm not even sure that I like the idea of adapting novels into films. It's very difficult to do, and it usually doesn't work. There are exceptions, but generally speaking, one feels disappointed with the result.