James Mangold Quotes

I'm interested in how people shoot because I have a very specific way of shooting and I'm fascinated by the way other people shoot films, particularly if they're smart and talented.

A lot of people have said my movies are all the same. But I don't actually make an effort to have a style. I'm usually just thinking of what can we do to make it funnier or more interesting or just kind of refine it and it ends up like that.

There are some scenes that work beautifully in a moving, sweeping master, which is how I like to work.

Oh yeah - I watched Knife in the Water, saw the shot, and repeated it. But even if I hadn't seen that film, inevitably the camera would've ended up on top of that mast, I mean if you think of it there are only so many dynamic shots on a boat.

When I started doing television, I thought that I would change the way that I shot, the way that I blocked, and the technical side of it. You're not going to change your relationship with the actors or how you approach the characters. That wasn't any different.

I never saw myself as a director. It's certainly a second language but making movies for 40 years, you pick stuff up. However, this style of making movies, this documentary style, is easier for me because I gather a lot of material and with an editor, write it on screen. You try to write based on what you shot.

I'm older and wiser. So and now having segued into filmmaking I'm looking at [Ridley Scott ] and what he does in an entirely different way and I have respect for what he does and how he composes shots. So that was what was completely fascinating.

I wish I was sort of someone like Woody Allen who can stage everything in one long master shot, no coverage; just, you know, that's it.

When I meet certain filmmakers, sometimes you sit down and you do have some kind of shorthand. It can be fun to see them as someone who has been through similar experiences, but also as someone who just loves film. You can talk with them about films in a way that feels really free.

Fellini, Kurosawa, and Bunuel move in the same field as Tarkovsky. Antonioni was on his way, but expired, suffocated by his own tediousness.

The editing of moving pictures is geared toward the single image. You'd have to edit things in new ways.

I think cartooning gets at, and re-creates on the page, some sixth sense ... in a way no other medium can.

The idea of directing a film is a strange one for me. I feel anti-mathematical, in a way, in that sense. I don't like when things make sense. I prefer if they don't.

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.

I don't like reverse-angle shots - I find them very fake and very untruthful to the viewer.

A lifetime isn't long enough to learn how to make films.

Being movie director you've got the art department, you've got the actors, you've got the camera department, you've got make-up and hair, and props. You've got your finger in all these pies, and you're making sure that everything cooks at the right temperature.

As a film director I like to have the actors create their own close-ups. It's an older style of filmmaking.

One of the most telling things about film school is you've got a lot of students wandering around saying, "Oh, I wish I could make a movie. I wish I could make a movie."

I would recommend that any writer get off their ass at least once and just try it. Directing is a completely different set of muscles. It also affects your writing because, once you start directing, you tend to write your scripts with directing in mind.

I always think it's a sign of a truly gifted director when they can move seamlessly between genres.

I went for a more classical approach to filmmaking with lots of dolly, track and cranes, and slightly slower, more choreographed fight moves, so you get more fight moves in one take.

I think you can say a lot with the movement of your camera but you can also say a lot by keeping it still.

There have been innumerable films about film-making, but Otto e Mezzo was a film about the processes of thinking about making a film -- certainly the most enjoyable part of any cinema creation.

I've never seen myself as a documentary filmmaker. I see myself as a filmmaker, period, and I am interested in drama as well as in documentary.