Stephen Hunter Quotes

I have no idea why one of our most original filmmakers would want to spend two years of his life translating someone else's movie from Spanish into English. And it wasn't such a good film in Spanish, either.

Trying to guess what the (mass) audience wants and then trying to satisfy that is usually a bad recipe for getting something good.

I'm also a huge cinephile, and I have witnessed that to honor the book literally word-for-word never makes a good movie.

In trying to cross over to the mainstream, some people stopped writing what they witnessed.

When people told me that 'Polladhavan' was a remake of 'Bicycle Thieves,' I wanted to laugh because comparing 'Polladhavan' to 'Bicycle Thieves' is a disgrace to the latter.

'Hairspray' was a movie turned Broadway musical turned Hollywood remake, and that is the 'Lion King' circle of life as we know it in Times Square, the creative loop that swings for the stars and sometimes crashes into the upper deck.

Broadway purists may deplore the influx of movie-spinoff musicals in recent years, wishing someone would turn off the popcorn machine and let more imaginative brainstorms blow through.

If you look at the least effective of the 'Twilight' movies, it was when they brought in an action-movie director instead of a director who was really a good storyteller. And you can tell the difference.

Imitation is being rewarded. They're learning that if you fit right in the mold, you get rewarded. Music is no longer a form of expression - it's a means to a lifestyle.

I'd love to do another film version of 'Romeo & Juliet.' I'm not too picky as long as it's a good story.

The only good Philip K. Dick film is 'Total Recall.' It's faithful to the book. Arnie gets it.

Before, you only had one Public Enemy and one Rakim and one Salt 'N' Pepa. Now, people have got the formula, and some of them are just doing it for the cheque. It's kind of watered down.

Hollywood has always seen Sondheim as a caviar brand unsuitable for a popcorn industry.

The worst thing you can do after a test screening is slash it for the lowest common denominator.

Most of the time, I don't think movies of TV shows are a great idea. It's worked a few times, but usually, I think that what's on TV works on TV.

In 'Blood Work,' they made choices I wouldn't have made, but I'm not a filmmaker. I took the money, and they told the story.

I avoid watching other people's versions of films or plays that I work on.

'Richard III' is a really difficult play to film - it's involved, often obscure. I felt it absolutely necessary to do more simplification than I've ever done before.

I'm going to do a sequel to 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' and this one is called 'The Girl in the Spider's Web', which is an American production. It's a clean slate: new cast, new director and everything and they're skipping from book one to book four.

Some musicians don't have strong opinions, or they deliberately don't have strong opinions because they want to try and sell as many records as possible.

When we got quite big and were generating a lot of money through the arenas, we became quite a big thing, and a lot of managers appeared, and it became a big machine, like we were in Pink Floyd or something, and I don't think we were into that. We didn't really compromise.

I don't think you're selling out by allowing the masses to love your art. The only curse is that, when you get so big, sometimes people forget to look at the music.

There are always pluses and minus to commercialization. It broadcasts something to the masses. So that's the plus. The minus is it may lose some of its meaning if you dilute it.

I'm the world's greatest apologist for Brian De Palma but his version of Ellroy's 'The Black Dahlia' is a disaster.

When a director is remaking a film, he should tweak it, add Bengali sentiments to it and make it look like a regional movie. A copy-paste job is something I don't support at all.