Robert Redford Quotes

The films that are coming out of SXSW are incredible, and they should get the same bids that films at Sundance are getting.

Sundance took me on my first film and from there sort of launched my career.

My first movie, 'Heathers,' had played at the festival, so I had a little bit of a Sundance connection, but I didn't really know about the Labs.

For me, I see filmmaking as art.

I always wanted to go to Sundance.

I believe that independent film making is the last frontier of creative expression available. So I'm always willing to lend a helping hand to a young film maker who's just getting into the business.

My first film festival and my first film that I've ever been in, 'Martha Marcy May Marlene,' that was at Sundance.

I met Jill Soloway at Sundance a couple years ago. I was there for 'Crystal Fairy', and she was there for 'Afternoon Delight'. She reached out and wanted to get together.

I so respect Sundance. I'd been hearing about it for years.

I'm just a sucker for a good script and people that are passionate about it. I love independents.

There's a heresy which is perpetuated by film school that to be a great director you have to write your own stuff.

My dad brought 'Clerks' to Sundance 22 years ago, and that's when his career started.

Yes, I would like to be involved in something that would hopefully be a blockbuster, but I'm interested in seeing new filmmakers telling new stories and to able to help them do that.

The kind of work I do and the films I believe in, I had to take charge of making that kind of cinema.

I can't wake up every day and not thank Sundance. They're a great beacon of light for any independent film. Just to have a film that you made shown on a screen for an audience in a theater is beyond me, so I owe them everything in the world.

I want to write and direct and kind of do my own thing.

Going forward, I would love to work with directors like Rian Johnson and Joss Whedon; people like that who are doing big films but do have really independent voices. That's kind of what I want to focus on, is always working with people with at least an independent point of view, even if it's not an independent film.

There are lot of people I'd wanna work with, but Wes Anderson, I would just wanna sit down with the guy. If he would ever put me in one of his movies, that would be the end.

If I tried to somehow wrap my head around the fact that Francis Ford Coppola directed my first movie, there's never a slot into which that ever fits in your mind.

I got picked for very unique and independent filmmaking experiences with auteurs. And I'm so lucky.

I would watch films like 'Frances Ha' and 'The Squid and the Whale,' and wonder why we weren't making these beautiful slice-of-life movies. Then I thought, 'Why am I not doing it?'

I'm always excited when I can discover new filmmakers.

Any film I do needs to excite me at a script level.

For me, the Sundance Institute is just an extension of something I believed in, which is creating a mechanism for new voices to have a place to develop and be heard.

There are many great writers out there and, actually, great scripts. The problem is - and this is what I've always felt, even when I got out of school and started reading scripts - the really smart, character-driven stuff tends to be smaller films, and they just don't get made.