Penelope Spheeris Quotes

I've worked with Neil Jordan, who I really adore. We did The Brave One [2007] together.

The prospect of being able to work on a Kaufman film with him directing was just too good to be true.

One of the most interesting aspects of the film project was collaborating with so many people - directors, filmmakers, and writers - over a five-year period. I learned that there are two components to this.

One of my groupies gave me a film that they made, and it ended up being amazing, so I got it shown at South by Southwest. If I can help get their stuff out there, then great.

A screenplay adaptation of my 'Punktown' novel 'Health Agent' has been making the rounds. The screenplay was written by my friend, singer/songwriter Walter Egan of 'Magnet & Steel' fame!

I have a deal with HBO to develop television, and I am also developing a movie called 'The Abstinence Teacher,' which is based on a book by Tom Perrotta.

To be quite honest, I've been very blessed when I've worked with Hollywood. The studios that have purchased my work to be adapted to film have really liked the work and wanted to stay as close as they could to what the book was.

So, yes, I wrote a script called 'Ben Is Back' that I got to make with a bunch of remarkable artists and craftspeople.

I did a short film with Donald Glover for one of his Childish Gambino projects, and Flying Lotus was an actor in it.

I had the great fortune to actually become friends with Sam [Fuller] and ultimately collaborate with him on White Dog, which we wrote together.

Anybody who knows how to make a good movie, knows that it's a collaborative undertaking. To deny that its really dangerous.

Filmmaking is a creative process so there is a lot of collaboration that happens on set between an actor and director, but at the end of the day, we're there to actualize the director's vision and things happen organically.

In making movies, time is so short-because it is so expensive-that we tend to neglect the place from which the best ideas come, namely that part of ourselves that dreams. The unconscious is our best collaborator.

I'd love to work with Paul Thomas Anderson or Quentin Tarantino, but these are dreams I don't need to rush to achieve. I'll be ready to make those movies when I'm ready to make those movies and they're ready to make them with me, if they ever want to.

My main interest in being a director, and the most important thing to me, is that world with the actors.

It was a great circumstance when I received the script of [Chloe] and Atom [Egoyan] said he wanted me to do it. I was inclined to say 'yes' immediately.

You're never in control. That - that is the greatest fallacy of the - you know, there's over 200 people that it requires to make a film. And there's people who are in control of how you look, what your performance is, what takes are used, what - you're only in control of how you say no.

I didn't come in as a writer that found producers, I came in under producers. So I've always respected the actual production process and producers in general.

When you're a director, you have great respect for directors. I am really pretty loyal to any director that I am working for and I want to help them realize whatever story and mood and tone that they're trying to realize. As an actor, you really just are a cog - you are an important cog, but you are just a piece of the machine.

If people enjoy the film, it can be really intriguing to see what created that film, how each one of those unique components came together, who the people are who did it and what it meant to them to do it.

It's a really unique situation where you just - you make independent films or you make big blockbuster movies, but it's very rare when all of those ingredients come together, and you can really tell a story that you care about with a character you absolutely love with the people you love making movies with.

What I love about making movies is that it's a collaboration. It's one of the most rewarding things, to create something and have someone show you something that you didn't see, and vice versa.

I went to NYU graduate film school and met Pam [Romanowsky], and after doing a few things with her I thought she had the right sensibility and that she could figure it [The Adderall Diaries] out.

With Mel [Brooks], only one time and that was later on during "Young Frankenstein" - never with Zero [Mostel] and never with Mel except I was writing every day, and then Mel would come to the house and read what I'd written. And then he'd say, yeah, yeah, yeah, OK, yeah, OK. But we need a villain or we need whatever it was.

I read the script and I really liked it. It was high energy, crazy and it goes to any level to get people nuts and I thought Eve was an interesting character. At first I didn't get her, so it made me want to do the role because I wanted to dive in and see what she was about. On top of that I also wanted to work with Jason Statham because he's an amazing actor.