A. R. Rahman Quotes

As soon as you start making a film that's expensive then the studio wants total control over all elements of it because they want to get all their money back. If you make a smaller film you can try a lot more things because you can have control over it and not just be a hired director. The lower the budget the more freedom you have.

I really do like the independent way of working. You don't get much studio intrusion compared to when you're working on a big Hollywood film where there tends to always be loads of people interfering. The only problem, though, with independent features is that they are hard to sell.

You have to have a certain amount of limitations, I think, to make art and to make something that can be alive on film. Money can get in the way of that.

The studios have been taken over by marketing people and accountants.

Most filmmakers can't afford to try something out that doesn't work.

Why should you have to atone for making big movies?

In order to understand what they need to understand, in order to write what they write, they have to be free. And yet, they aren't ever free. They are not free because they are not free of the constrictions their art puts on them.

I suppose the worst case scenario is that people will get to the point where they can't actually afford to make what they want to make creatively. The industry is collapsing.

It betrays hubris on the part of the artist to think his medium is limiting him, and I think we all recognize this.

Actors dread working with studios because they dictate what you do in a way that independent movies can't.

When we did Wayne's World, it was 14 million dollars and they didn't bug us too much because they just thought it was some little movie that nobody was ever going to see. We showed them.

After Proust, there are certain things that simply cannot be done again. He marks off for you the boundaries of your talent.

In a movie, you have to be mindful that no budget is going to be able to deal with running around the globe at every whim of the writer.

Most people who've had a big hit movie like 'Paranormal Activity,' the next thing they say is, 'I want to make a $100 million movie.' I have no interest in making more expensive movies.

It kind of irks me that the studio films still have to be so safe even though they don't really cost as much to make.

I don't think of myself as having any freedom when it comes to how 'Monstress' is structured and how the story is going because a comic book has to be even more tightly structured than a novel, because there is no room for mistakes. Once the art is done, the art is done.

Indie movies can be a lot more stressful than studio pictures. The stakes are just as high whether you're talking $3 million or $40 million.

If you really want to have an anarchist experience, make a movie with a studio.

Budget grows out of the story. If you're writing a story with people caught in an elevator for most of the film, you're pretty sure it won't be a $200 million movie.

Finances completely determine what we can do and how quickly we can move.

Maybe I'll just write books. I'd like to make another movie, but I don't want to go back and [do] what they want you to do, to make it for a million dollars. I did that. I don't need a lot, but I need what I used to get, and they don't give you that anymore.

When you raise the budget, you make creative compromises. The higher the budget goes, the more cuts in your movie happen. When people talk about how movies are watered down, that's a direct reflection of money and budget. The less money you spend; the more risks you can take. That doesn't mean it will be successful, but at least you can try different stuff. The higher your budget is, the less you can do that.

You spend most of your time as a director trying to move forward with the movie. It happens on a daily basis, if not more than once a day, that you are struggling with budgetary constraints. Whereas when you're writing, the limitation that you have is your imagination. So it's decidedly non-pragmatic.

I direct, and I make movies I can't finance. I can't raise money. I can't sell anything. I make things.

What naturally stops you making the film is there is no more money in the budget. That's really what it is. If you had an unlimited budget, if you were a billionaire and you financed your own movies, then you can either date, because you can sit in an editing room for six years, like Howard Hughes, and never finish anything.