Christopher McQuarrie Quotes

I'd love to see us get to a point where you can make a movie and not worry about the limits of the violence. Then I think they'd get so violent that people would get bored of it.

All the PG-13 superhero movies are depriving me of the gore that I need.

Some of my films are known for the depiction of violence. I don't have anything to prove with that any more.

A lot of violence, a lot of gore in it, and I just didn't want to do that kind of thing.

The original 'RoboCop' was X-rated, and then they had to cut it down so it became R-rated, and Verhoeven claimed that actually made the movie more violent, because it's what you don't see that actually scares you.

A movie that gets a PG-13 rating can show someone running down a street killing 27 people. And there are no repercussions.

It was exactly the same on the South Park movie really too. There's lots of violence in that too, but it always came down to anything sexual... They don't care about anything else.

I've been involved with violent movies, and then I've also said at a certain point, 'I can't take it anymore. Please cut it.' You know, you've got to respect the filmmaker, and it's a really tough issue.

We are providing a platform to creators who are expressing their emotions; they are expressing what they are feeling - fears, joys, terror. That's what art is about, and we don't want to censor it, but neither would we permit violence which feels gratuitous or glorified to be on our platform.

All my films were based on sensitive issues, and they were passed without any problems. I give full credit to the Censor Board for being capable enough to do their work well.

I'm not talking so much about sex - after you've seen sex in a picture, what else can happen - but violence is very bad. People think these are things you are allowed to do. I think they should be forbidden.

Loopy as the Motion Picture Association of America's ratings system is, it's better than what you'd probably get by putting such decisions in the federal government hands.

The world is filled with terrible things that can influence children, and movies have depicted them since time immemorial. Should every terrible thing warrant an R-rating?

A nice, easy place for freedom of speech to be eroded is comics, because comics are a natural target whenever an election comes up.

Cable had a latitude to move which created less censorship and bestowed upon the artists, the writers and the creators, more liberty to create their shows.

When you do a film, when you do a television show, eventually someone comes along and will say to you, 'Don't say that because, one, you will offend someone, or, two, no one will get that. Someone's going to be confused by that, not get the reference and feel abandoned, and then they will get angry at the entertainment.'

In a democracy, you have to find a market niche, make sure a novel is 'interesting' and 'spectacular.' That may be the toughest censorship of all.

I'm not sure I agree with the thesis, because I think that even though something grotesque or gross has been part of film since way back, what we accept or what we can get away with on the screen is broader now.

Anything that exists on the human palette is, from my point of view, fair game for artists to portray. You don't have to go see it if you don't want to, so don't go.

I don't know that a political climate - as long as it's still a free country - makes much difference in the film world.

In my mind, everything is too sanitised on television - what is wrong with things going wrong?

With the first 'Hatchet,' I had an epic battle with the ratings board. They kept giving the movie an NC-17. There is absolutely no way that movie should have gotten an NC-17. All the gore in it is so ridiculous and over-the-top that you can't take it seriously.

A little bit of gratuitous violence in a well-thought-out story is fine.

When censorship is intelligent, it will stop a film before it is made. If not, it is too late.

Why on earth does anybody watch that stuff [television violence]?