Jay Roach Quotes

I went to the University of Toronto to study the history and theory of film, in the back of my mind thinking I'd go to NYU film school and see if I could make a career of it.

My roommate at Yale University introduced me to the auteur theory of filmmaking. I soon became a big fan of the works of John Ford, Kenji Mizoguchi, Ernst Lubitsch, and Stan Brakhage. I then decided to make my own films!

I realized what interested me as a student of film was one thing and the movies that I liked were another.

We didn't even think about it, you know? I used to collect laser discs, and you'd have some college professor analyzing It's a Wonderful Life or Citizen Kane, and now it is pretty funny - the idea of commentary for a silly kid's movie, you know?

Many people who have watched 'Pieta' have said my filmmaking has become more objective.

I grew up with Forrest J. Ackerman's 'Famous Monsters of Filmland' along with a plethora of movie tomes and wanted to write about film with a sense of personality, passion, and humor.

I think each film should be regarded as its own specific text.

I've recently enjoyed the Paul Thomas Anderson commentaries and the David Fincher commentaries.

A lot of young filmmakers bring their movies to my dad because he always gives lots of good editing ideas and notes. He'd be a good film professor.

I loved American filmmakers when I was growing up. I didn't get to film school or anything. I was a very bad student. I just devoured film, but there was a point in my teens when I started to run a little film society.

How would you compare Polanski or Kubrick? I try not to do any comparisons.

I read every single review, because I love film criticism and I'm interested.

I was never interested in film. Never. I never even thought of it. I wasn't even a film buff, I didn't see many films ever.

I kind of don't like doing film commentaries because I think they're kind of weird.

I'm sure I've all but lost friends by maintaining that, despite their love for it, I always saw Stanley Kramer's 'It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World' as more of an exercise in anti-comedy than humor.

No critic writing about a film could say more than the film itself, although they do their best to make us think the oppposite.

Filmmakers and critics wrote about each other and sometimes very harshly. This no longer exists.

It took an entire generation of critical thinking for Douglas Sirk's films to be really appreciated.

I fell in love with filmmaking. I fell in love with criticism. I fell in love with theory, and it made me really dogmatic in my approach to choosing roles.

One thing I don't do anymore is read or pay attention to the critical response, which is a bummer because when I started, and when I was in school, I loved to read old film criticism.

Some of our favorite films are obviously not written by the person who directed it. And yet a 'Taxi Driver,' or some Nicholas Ray movie, like 'In a Lonely Place,' seems so personal or obsessive or whatever.

Criticism is okay from people who know the finer points of cinema.

Basically, I am a huge film buff and love watching all kinds of films.

I wasn't a film buff.

I grew up cinematically in the '70s. I was watching a lot of Godard, Bresson, Dreyer, and all sorts of old films and the Czech New Wave.