Yorgos Lanthimos Quotes

I think you get in trouble if you make experimental big studio films.

Basically, independent film doesn't exist anymore. It does if you have two or three stars in your film, but it's just very difficult.

I'm not trying to be self-serving, but you know, you get to Hollywood, and if you want to make something big and loud and dumb, it's pretty easy. It's very hard to go down there and make a film like 'Sideways,' which I thought was a great film. They don't want to make films like that anymore, even though that film was very successful.

The lifeblood of my career has been independent film.

There was a golden era in film-making in Hollywood back in the 1970s, and although there is some great independent film-making in America, it's actually very hard to get independent films made in the United States. It's much more feasible from Europe.

It's almost an impossible thing to get a movie made that is written by two actors who want to star in it, when no one knows who they are. The only time it happened that I know of was when Sylvester Stallone did it in 'Rocky.'

There isn't a studio in the world that wouldn't burn half its soundstages to get a Tom Cruise movie.

I don't see many explosions or ten-car crashes in the course of my life, so I don't put them into my movies. I would love to live in a society where 'My Dinner with Andre' made $100,000,000. Then I would be in the mainstream. I could do that stuff easier than I could do 'Meatballs.'

'The Book of Love' is the kind of James L. Brooks mainstream movie that the majors are ignoring.

I love independent film so much, and that's kind of where I made my mark.

'Srimanthudu' is a film very close to my heart. It's my first production, and I'm more than happy with its performance at the box office.

I do believe that there are some films that cannot be made without stars.

In the States it's more and more difficult to get an independent film off the ground, and you certainly wont get the opportunity to play something like that in a studio movie.

I think in Europe, movies are made like a commodity and then sold as art.

The only difference from one $100 million budget film to another is which of the 12 box stars are getting $20 million to be in it.

It's nice when you're working in Hollywood and there's a movie you'd like to see that no one is making anymore. You make it yourself.

I think indie films have more of a fresh, experimental vibe about them, whereas studio films know what they want and can basically get it.

Well, I haven't really been able to shoot in California for a while. Little movies yeah, but the big movies we can't shoot there. It's just a shame that Arnold Schwarzenegger can't deliver on this level.

You've got these big studio films and these tiny independent films now. It's very much either/or. With the independent films, it's always a beautiful risk - it might never be seen. With the studio films, you're conforming to the formula of what's always been in place.

I have always tried to make profitable films because people's offices shut down if films fail, and I will do everything to avoid that.

Blockbusters run the mainstream industry. We may never again have a decade like the 1970s, when directors were able to find such freedom.

Big feature films are another world.

When a film like Chris Nolan's Memento cannot get picked up, to me independent film is over. It's dead.

Ultimately, making movies, if you don't have a big star, it's hard to do. Or if it's not a star director.

Unless a Western's made money - doesn't matter who made the money, doesn't matter what the subject is - if the last one didn't make any money, you can't make another one for a four-year period. Westerns more than any genre.