Jon Ronson Quotes

It's hard to get a film, you know, you need a very special film to be able to get that experimental. But, I would love to see that happen. I would love the opportunity to be more experimental than I am.

I definitely think independent film is very exciting, and you get to sometimes take bigger risks. So that's always a challenge and something that I look forward to.

Independent films are where you really get to cut your teeth and have some fun and do the things that mainstream Hollywood doesn't want to do.

Hollywood has known this for quite a while: Cable is the place to go because they truly have a supportive network and they want to do things that cannot be seen on broadcast. That stimulates the writer-producer. Cable is king.

The best films come about through experimentation.

Sometimes you find that there is better material in small and more independent movies. There's more risk-taking.

In studio films, everything has to be boxed in, everybody needs to know beforehand - this is comedy, this is sci-fi, this is drama - and what's the point of independent film if you don't get to experiment?

There are movies and TV shows I wish we didn't make, sure, but we're in the business of creating things that are not all going to work.

The cool thing about those small-budget movies is that there's a tremendous amount of freedom the filmmakers have since there's less money at stake.

When I did 'Memento,' independent film was where all the really good stuff was.

I admire artists who really take risks and aren't afraid to do smaller movies and obscure, abstract things. It would be really cool if my career neared that.

'Eagle vs Shark' is a little film I could take risks with and make mistakes on.

If you're making a smaller movie, you're almost obligated to do something unexpected and surprising.

If you're someone who's making film or TV or music, or any kind of art form now, there's a billion outlets and they all have an opinion.

I really like Jason Blum a lot. We're friends, and while we make wildly disparate films, we share a philosophy about low-budget filmmaking, about taking chances on young filmmaking, taking risks and obliterating our salary so we can make something cheaply and if it wins everyone wins big.

Filmmakers now have the freedom to create the type of movie they want. More screenwriters, directors, and producers now have the chance to see their words on screen now that VOD and streaming outlets are available. Overall, it's a good thing for filmmaking and documentarians.

If there was no risk, it wouldn't be art. It wouldn't be worth making. There is risk even in a fairy tale. Fiction is closest to pure narrative, and pure narrative is simply the logic we try to impose on an ever-changing reality.

It's really just a freedom that we have with Amazon to push ourselves creatively. It allowed me to say, you know, okay this is going to be a little half-hour film here to start the season.

And ultimately, it's good for all of us to have more original programming on the air. Business doesn't drive the creative. So, in identifying a project like Dovekeepers, looking at something like Extant and looking at Under the Dome, it was about falling in love with a piece of material, getting excited by the creative direction, hearing a vision, and getting excited about the potential for those projects and building the business model around it. And they're not all modeled the same way. Every one is different.

It's really nice to go down to an extremely low-budget movie, but that is very daring and courageous and try something different, where the roles usually are more complicated.

I think cinema is better today that you can be more daring with what you do. If you do it well. With that comes a responsibility not to bore people with vulgarity and all that stuff. To know how to do it right, know how to lay it out there.

I think it's a total fallacy for people to say, "You couldn't make those old movies today." I think there's more ways to get a movie made today than ever in the history of the entertainment industry. It's a very exciting time to work in movies, if you're a creative person looking to make a very personal, weird vision.

An artist should be taking risks. That's the whole idea of being an artist.

I think Hollywood, as it's been, will have to change because the model of Hollywood is "we'll make this content, and you guys buy it," but I don't think that's the future.

Your first film is always your best film, in a way. There's something about your first film that you never ever get back to, but you should always try. It's that slight sense of not knowing what you're doing, because the technical skills you learn - especially if you have a film that works, that has some kind of success - are beguiling. The temptation is to use them again, and they're not necessarily good storytelling techniques.