Michel Hazanavicius Quotes

You may confuse a lot of people when going against the grain of conventional thinking, and that's perfectly okay. As an entrepreneur, standing up for your vision to your family and friends might possibly be the best practice you will get for the life that awaits you.

We need the disruption of categories that lead us to abandon the difficult, the disagreeable, and the least likely to go very far.

I have a real interest in pushing some of the limits of things that studios don't want to make.

A lot of people will say different stuff like, 'You can't do it.' They'll say no before I even say anything. You just have to believe in yourself, and there's a reason they might say no, because they probably haven't seen it before.

Sometimes, I'll hear from other writers or folks in the publishing industry that my books are rule-breakers, which I take as a compliment.

Every film has to be the next something else; originality isn't celebrated because you can't market it.

But sometimes I think you have to try to do things that people don't think are doable.

I don't like playing standards. I like to do my own cutting edge work.

If you want to do something different, you're going to come up against a lot of naysayers.

The thing I'm most proud of about - not all of our movies, but a lot of our movies - is that you might love 'em, you might hate 'em, but most of the time, they're trying to be different or trying new things, which I think is really important.

I'm all about risque - I love that stuff. I love to be creative - that's what the entertainment business is about.

I was raised with a mother who told me that I wouldn't succeed, that I wasn't good enough. Even at the pinnacle of my success, she'd come to a show, and there'd be, like, 10,000 people screaming. And she'd say, "I just don't get it." I think she had so little faith in herself and her abilities as a parent that she couldn't imagine any offspring of hers could do so well. And all that did was drive me to push back. If someone says, "You can't do this," I'm like, "F-ck you! Oh, yes I can, and I will."

Everything I've done hasn't worked out - you know, some things aren't as great as others - but I'm having so much fun, who cares? Isn't that what an artist is supposed to do? We're trying to change the world. Otherwise, why be an artist? You want to shake people up and make 'em think.

One of the great things about cartoons is that they're not real - you're not watching real people and it engages your imagination. One of the cornerstones of America is that we are creative thinkers. We're innovators.

As actors you're always afraid to go too far but Lasse Hallstrom wants you to go too far. He wants you to do it wrong, to be over-the-top, and that's so freeing to be able to think 'Now I can try and be bad'. There's no pressure on you and you don't feel you can make a mistake.

We're just gonna keep making things and challenging ourselves to make them more cheaply and more renegade and more interesting. That's the only thing we might challenge ourselves to do in the age of so many movies and so many TV shows. We're aware that we're asking time of people to watch stuff, and that there's so much stuff to watch, so we're gonna try to offer you something unique. And it may not always succeed, but it will definitely be different.

The thing is, if people get it right away, I just don't think you're making art. I think you're making something they're comfortable with. You have to challenge people. You know, it has to be new. It has to be something they haven't seen before. Just bring them something they haven't seen before. They aren't going to love it right away because they haven't seen it before. So they have to take a minute, you know?

If you're trying to do something different, you can't ask someone to help, because they'll want to make it not different.

Playing this game, you cannot have nothing holding you back. If you're thinking, you're wrong automatically.

I've been told if you're an actress you can't sing, if you're a dancer you can't act, you can't do theatre and be respected if you've done a TV soap, you can't have a No. 1 record. All these different things they've told me I can't do, but I wanted to do them, so I've done them.

My company and people think I'm wacky when I have an idea... I know if I have an idea, no one will want to go through it. But if I persist, people will go through it.

Greatness, in the last analysis, is largely bravery - courage in escaping from old ideas and old standards and respectable ways of doing things.

You only get one album. You only get one single. You get one shot in music. But I have a million different dreams. Why can't I go out and try to achieve them all? Who are you to say I can't?

Believing in yourself and what you do is so important. It took me a long time to find that confidence. If you're an artist and you're taking risks, then you're doing something right if some people don't get it.

It was actually the enormous risks I took with my pictures, skating right up to the edge of non-acceptance, that paid off so handsomely.