Bong Joon-ho Quotes

I'll tell you what, I had complete control on 'Unleashed.' I directed, produced, chose the musician, picked the costumes, and everything. I never had anyone saying, 'I don't like this and I don't like that.' The studio, Universal, were easy. It was this weird movie no one cared about.

Under my contract with Capitol, I have complete freedom to do just about anything I want in my own way.

That's why I'm really trying to produce my own stuff. This film was so good, because I produced it myself, and developed it, and made it with New Line, which is a smaller studio, so I was in control of a lot of stuff that I wasn't in control of for my other films.

I think the line is where you're in the studio, you're creating. That belongs to you as an artist. Nothing should taint that. I shouldn't be thinking about what the fans want, I shouldn't be thinking about what the radio wants, what the label wants, what your manager wants, a song for the chicks, a song for the street.

My movies are not messed with by the studios.

Sometimes being an actor is being a song in someone else's mixtape, so I really understand why more and more actors are making films of their own.

You don't always just have to do an indie movie to feel like you're controlling it with a few people that you really have connected with, creatively. You can do it on a bigger scale.

I know that if a film is ready to emerge out of what I write, I'll be able to go off and make it without asking anyone's permission.

I've produced my own films for twenty years now - it means I have to talk to less people.

The ultimate thing is creating your own stuff and making projects for yourself. That's what Seth Rogen does. He's writing and producing a lot of the movies that he's the lead in.

I've never been one to sit back and go, 'I'd better do what the audience wants me to do, because I don't want to lose them.'

I need to find a way of retaining creative control.

I don't like directing that much to want a career as a director for hire. I like to have as much creative control as possible.

My goal was, and still is, to write first, direct my own stuff whenever possible and control my own creative destiny.

Richard Donner is one of the few directors in Hollywood that can make whatever movie he wants exactly the way he wants it. No one will stop him.

I always say that AMC hires filmmakers, and they let them be filmmakers.

It was important that I got my own voice out there in the world. I'd used it on other people's films, collaborated, and I thought, 'You know, I can do this myself.' That was more important than anything else.

I have been very lucky to have final cut in all my films; everything that is wrong in them is my fault.

Studios never put pressure. They know the kind of films I want to make.

It has nothing to do with commercial success. You cannot calculate in your head how to put the mosaic together to make a commercial film: that's out of the question.

Stand up for yourself and fight for your right to be the artist that you want to be. There's plenty of pressure from outside; people tell you how to dress and how to sing or what to sing, but I always felt like if I'm going to fail or succeed, I want to do it on my own terms.

You can take your life into your own hands in terms of directing. There are ways for you to finance yourself and to write and make a film.

No one pretty much tells me what kind of horror films to make.

When I was 28, I made this film called 'Drinking Buddies' that I starred in and produced, and we improvised the entire thing, and it was a complete exercise in freedom of expression in making something for only the purpose of making it, not for recognition or money or anything else, and it's still my favorite thing I've ever done.

I couldn't be an artist who was told what to do, what to be, what to sing.