Hiroyuki Sanada Quotes

In America, they shoot budgets and schedules, and they don't shoot films any more. There's more opportunity in Europe to make films that at least have a purity of intent.

I think it's easier to make a film with 200 million dollars than 960 grand.

Often, people who want to make interesting films simply don't have the money to do it.

I'm from the creative side of Hollywood. I'm up for anyone that wants to support my work. If you have eyeballs and give me a budget and are nice to me, I'm in.

I grew up in the indie world, and that's what I'm used to, but there's something really incredible about having money behind a film and having the time to do as many takes as you want.

Not all of our movies work, but we take shots, and we're able to do that because we really stick to low budgets.

With an independent film, you have a little more freedom, and you also have less money, so you're sort of struggling to get it done, to get something that works. With a big studio, everything is there for you, and it's easier.

In America, I don't think you have the creative freedom that I'm used to. Traditionally, it's a producer's cinema here.

I'm considered to some degree a successful director working in Hollywood, making films my way but using studio financing. But with almost every single one, I get praised up the wazoo by people who never would have financed the films. It's: "Gee, this movie is so new and different - what do you want to do next?" "This." "Oh, that's too new and different."

I'm all about working with directors that are doing different techniques and I think everyone has their way of getting it to the place that they think is best.

We try to make films for people [that are] the films that we'd like to see. They're not easy to get made. They're hard to get made. You have to keep the budget low to get them made. But at the end of the day, I don't really worry about competition, because I don't really think of it that way. I don't feel like I'm in a race with anybody.

One of the things you have to understand with The Room, I never approached a studio to produce, because I know no one in Hollywood will produce this. I came to Hollywood and I said "I will produce this movie the way I want it."

It's true that I don't think I'd be a good director. If I were a director, I'd try to hire the best people I could and then leave them alone. I don't know much about cameras or lighting, so I'd make sure that I had a really good cameraman who understood lenses and lighting, and I say to him, "This is the scene we have to shoot and this is what I think it should be, you go do it." Same with actors. But really, very good directors who know everything do basically the same thing. They hire you and then they leave you alone.

It’s literally true, as Shakespeare said--all the world’s a stage. It wasn’t that way when I first got into the movies in 1924, but it is now. That’s why I find Hollywood newer and more exciting every day. Whatever you hear it’s still a place where a kid from Montana can jump on a horse, ride that-a-way, and keep right on going.

You have to really be able to trust the director. It's about the filmmaker and whether or not I'm going to be able to have a relationship with them and want to follow them down that road, wherever it may lead.

I think I'm really drawn to filmmakers and artists who are kind of pathologically incapable of thinking straightforward about film, and about life as well, who cannot help but think laterally, think sideways about an approach to anything cinematic.

I've always felt that an independent film is a film that almost doesn't get made.

Whatever field you can do that, that's where you want to do it, and I think that's why people like David Fincher and Ridley Scott are interested in it, too, because when you sit down on a meeting in HBO and they're like, "More, more." You're just like, "Oh yeah, I love this." Sometimes it's a little harder in film. I think also it's a great audience, take advantage of it. It's a great audience.

Everything that I've done so far has had a bigger budget than the last, but I've never ever felt the benefit of the bigger budget because the ideas always exceed the budget.

A million pounds sounds like a lot of money now that I'm saying it. But in terms of moviemaking, it's not a lot of money. And yet you can see what can be done with that, with the talent of a great cinematographer and great director and actors.

I have a lot of films that I haven't gotten made, and that continues to trouble me. But someday, some way or another, I think I will. It's all about timing. There's a moment when you're hot and studios will make your next film, and then there's a moment when you're really cold, and they couldn't care less what you want to do next. That's when you have to recede and make lower-budgeted films.

I do love making films. I want to be a filmmaker that grows and progresses and does keep trying to push myself. I think that's it... and a bit of confidence maybe.

Directing a movie precludes me from being involved in any greater way. But, the job was never to do more, it was always to enable. Sometimes as a producer, you're creating and writing it, or sometimes you're writing and directing it, or other times you're there from the very beginning.

George Clooney is great. He's incredibly prepared and he attracts a tremendously talented crew, which says a lot for him personally and professionally.

I read the book and I think, "Well, this is the movie we're going to make," and then someone else reads it, and they take a completely different movie from it. And both are valid.