Alexandre Aja Quotes

I think when you're a director, it's hard to do something unless you're absolutely over-the-moon in love with it. The audience, they spend 90 minutes with it, but for you, it's anywhere between a year and a half to three years of your life, every day, working on it.

I think of all my movies as home movies! It's just that some are more expensive than others.

When you direct a movie, you're basically looking at a story, the way you want to look at it. You bring that director's vision, and I'm totally open for that.

All the director wants is their idea of the movie to be believed in.

I want to make movies that I want to see, and what I miss and I'm not seeing.

When you're working on a movie you always hope that people will go for it and enjoy what you're doing.

At least I want to be making films that are somehow born out of me that are stories I want to tell. The challenge is figuring out how to do it where you can make them personal, yet still deliver to an audience a film experience that is satisfying and emotional, and that's what I'm trying to do.

You have to make films you feel strongly about. And then hope you can find the audience.

I don't understand the whole testing-numbers thing. It is not how I want to make movies.

Ultimately when I throw myself behind a movie, I have to really believe in that director's vision.

I believe that there's good content or bad content. You see interviews when somebody interviews a director of a movie that didn't perform well in the box office, and he says, 'The audience didn't understand my movie.' If people didn't go to buy the ticket, then you did the wrong movie.

I think that making a movie is not just making the movie - it is also about having thoughtful ideas and embracing all the aspects of its launch.

Make movies that you want to go and watch in a theatre.

Being open to what's happening in front of you is the most important thing about being a director. To allow the magic to exist and to be light enough on your feet to harness it as it's happening. That's what makes cinema interesting.

I have always believed that facilitating good, unusual content should be one of my prerogatives as someone who has spent half his life in cinema.

I watch films, so I know what it is to be there in a theatre as the audience. So I always want to communicate with them when I make films, but that is not the only thing. I also want to say something which I feel deeply, and which I feel I can connect with the rest of the audience.

With Quentin Tarantino, he makes movies imagining himself as the audience. To be specific and true to what he wants resonates to people who like his movies.

I just make movies and hope people appreciate them.

The filmmaker is really important to me: it could be their first film; it's not just about their reputation, but I have to really believe in them.

I think Van Sant is the most important American director we have. He takes the most risks. He's just pure to me.

I was never interested in being powerful or famous. But once I got to film school and learned about movies, I just fell in love with it. I didn't care what kind of movies I made.

Every show I've ever, you know, produced, essentially it's the show I want to watch myself.

I'm proud of 'Sinister' because Scott and Cargill did a great job on the movie, and I set up a framework for them to make what they wanted to make. They gave me the idea, and I figured out how to get it out into the world.

Once a film is made and it exists, someone somewhere is going to watch it and that is kind of the magic of it all.

Obviously, I try to make the films work for an audience. That's the main point of making a film, and in retrospect, one can see that certain films, let's say Leaving Las Vegas, demonstrated its own success.