Jenji Kohan Quotes

Movies have power. Power to impact society and the choices we make. I want to entertain, but I also want to say something to the world.

I make movies that audiences like, that I'd want to see. That's all.

In my theater, I'm not trying to change the world.

I spent a lot of time doing really unimportant work as an actor. It was important when I started writing that I obviously make it entertaining, or no one is going to go see it - but to really make you think, that is my goal.

Filmmaking, like any other art, is a very profound means of human communication; beyond the professional pleasure of succeeding or the pain of failing, you do want your film to be seen, to communicate itself to other people.

You always want your films to go as far as they can.

I think it's important that we all try to give something to this medium, instead of just thinking about what is the most efficient way of telling a story or making an audience stay in a cinema.

As a storyteller, when you're writing a movie and when you're directing, you want to keep people entertained. That's the whole point, right? It has to be entertaining.

In some ways, you could argue, television is doing far more interesting work than the movies. It's more fulfilling.

I wouldn't take a directing job if I didn't think it was enriching life.

I have spent my life paying attention to my art form, developing my art form, worrying about my show and what I'm bringing to people, making sure that I give them a fine trade.

I love the intimacy and the passion and the danger that go into independent filmmaking. Because it comes out of a creative necessity. It comes from people who really want to make a movie and want to make a difference and want to grab an audience by the gullet and show them something different.

Ultimately, it has been a struggle- but I was in Minneapolis and Austin a couple of weeks ago, sitting in theaters with complete strangers watching this weird movie that Kirk and I thought up and I was excited to be making film.

I try to work on shows that I would want to watch.

I don't understand the whole testing-numbers thing. It is not how I want to make movies.

A great byproduct of a TV show, movie, or play is when it can act as a catalyst for someone.

I mean, I don't know anything else that I would try to do, but it's a very frustrating thing to do, because you are trying to take what's a fantasy in your head and make it live through the minds of 200 people.

It's one of the things that looks good written down, but the reality is that you think about the pieces you're doing and try to bear in mind everyone in the audience.

'Rocket Science' is really where I fell in love with filmmaking, I think 'Camp' was incredible, but it was so bizarre, and I was trying to find my footing in this world where you don't have an audience for immediate validation.

I really hope people go out and support the indie filmmakers, because it's a dying breed and there's a lot of cool voices out there that need to be heard.

I think when I start out writing, I always try to write the version of the movie that I want to go see. I don't mean it in a way that ignores the audience, but I really set out to make a movie that I want to see and that, hopefully, other people will want to go see it. So whatever's amusing to me, I guess, I throw it all in there.

As a media artist and filmmaker, I'm constantly considering the role of situational context when creating my work.

What's my dilemma here? Am I making entertainment or am I making art? What am I saying? At the end of the day, cinema is entertainment for millions of people, but for me it's expression.

I believe that there's good content or bad content. You see interviews when somebody interviews a director of a movie that didn't perform well in the box office, and he says, 'The audience didn't understand my movie.' If people didn't go to buy the ticket, then you did the wrong movie.

Going through this musical experience really helped us to understand the core of the film.