Nick Hornby Quotes

You're more constrained when you're wealthy. Or when you're making a bigger film and people complain about no budgets; but having a small amount of money to make a film means you're at your absolute freest to express yourself as an artist.

I'm not tied to budgets. I'm tied to the story that I want to tell, and how much it's going to cost is up to whatever the economic situation of the studio is.

I just want to make films that have enough of a budget to pull off high-level imagery but also have a budget that is low enough that I can do what I want.

For me, the scale of the budget is part of the creative process. 'Swingers' is the movie it is because we made it for exactly the right budget. Had it been made for a higher number, it would not have been as imaginative as we had to make it, given the budget constraints we had.

I never think about the budget of the film.

If you're a producer, you always spend too much money because you want that shot - and you're willing to spend a bundle to get it.

Even on a $100 million film, people will complain that they haven't got enough money and enough time, so that's always going to be an element in filmmaking.

In the U.K., there's absolutely no money for television. So you can do pretty much whatever you want. They're not losing money on any of the shows, so they'll give you a lot of creative freedom. In the United States, there are millions and millions of dollars at stake, so they need a sure formula.

Whether you're making a million dollar film or a $100 million film there is never enough money, there's never enough time.

It seems there's a sliding scale between the money they spend on a movie and its creativity.

There's no way you can shoot low-budget stuff on lots of locations. It's just a practicality thing because every time you move, it costs time and money.

If you have to make a story in 10 rupees or you know that at this stage you can get only 10 rupees then you cut down on your expenses. But when one has made four-five films one likes to broaden the horizons.

If one makes a short film with reasonable technical finesse, it will cost between Rs. 50,000 and Rs. one lakh. That's a lot of money for someone starting off.

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.

Whenever you're doing film for television and you look at the budget that you have, which is much more constricted than a movie budget, you think, "God, are they going to be able to do what they say they are?"

I always felt restrained by lower-budget films. I enjoyed making them, and I felt fulfilled, but I really did always want to make bigger movies.

What happens is you submit your script with an idea of what the budget might be, and the financier will offer you less than that. In order to do it for less, it means cutting out the art, usually.

We can't spend money on programs just because they sound good... Meals on Wheels sounds great.

We ought to prioritize national disasters... in a fiscally responsible way.

It's hard to make a movie that's very expensive and not be thinking of the results all the time.

Compared to TV, 'Palookaville' was restriction-free, except we had no money and no time.

It doesn't matter how big or small your film is: you still don't have enough money. You don't have enough time to shoot it.

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

When you're working on a novel, you never think about how much it would cost to shoot one of your scenes. But that's a huge consideration in film and TV.

We are not frou-frou creative types. We have done both sides of the business and are constantly asking ourselves, 'How are we going to pay for this?' But the criteria is that it must fit with our world.