Willem Dafoe Quotes

There used to be lots of legitimate independent distributors: Fox Searchlight, Miramax, Lionsgate, Warner Independent, Focus Features, Paramount Vantage, Picturehouse and Fine Line. Most of them have closed.

Hollywood is no longer the top. I love going to the cinema. I've always adored the idea of being in great, epic films. But they just don't really exist anymore. It's a real shame. There's great auteurs that create small movies, but it's really hard for anyone to see them, and for them to make any sort of money, or for them even to be made in the first place.

I was still making movies so it wasn't as if I were working in a bar, but they were independent films that couldn't find distributors.

It's very difficult to break into motion pictures, but it's oddly easier for directors today because of independent films and cable, who have inherited for the most part those films of substance that the studios are reluctant to finance.

It's quite a dangerous career move to go wilfully on making films that may not find a distributor.

Nothing feels worse than knowing that people didn't see your movie. That they wanted to and the critics loved it but nobody knew where it was because it didn't do what it was supposed to do opening weekend. It used to be that independents were allowed to stay in the theaters, build word of mouth.

As far as acting in films, there is not much out there that is very interesting to do. The ones that are interesting to me are independent films and they have trouble raising money. With people putting their money into blockbusters, there is not much left for the independents.

Independent films in this country are in the same position. Miramax and Fine Line are not independent - they're with Disney! Come on. Or they're with Warner Brothers. They're all with somebody.

I think they quite like me when I work because I'm one of the safer directors to back, because even if my films don't bring their costs in back home, once they're shown outside of India they manage to cover the costs.

While more great films are being made every year, it is increasingly difficult to get indies into theaters or on TV.

The traditional Hollywood system is pretty rigid, but the film scene in, say, South Africa is booming with a lot of possibilities. If you have the cameras and reasonable capital, you can put your film in theatres next to 'Guardians of the Galaxy.' A great example of that was Kagiso Lediga's film 'Blitz Patrole.'

It's so nice that there's all this new space for new, good content. It's good news for us actors, since nobody makes real independent films anymore.

It's easy to get a theatrical release that shows in one theater for a week. But there's no advertising, and no one sees the movie. It's hard to get a real theatrical release. The distribution of independent films is, to me, extraordinarily frustrating.

We make a lot of movies that I don't think merit a wide release. We have this label called Tilt, and we have the movies come out on that, and that's fine. But it shocks me when, having done this a few times, when I really believe a movie should get a wide release, and I struggle to get it released. That does surprise me.

One of the benefits of doing low-budget movies is you don't have to release them wide to recoup. You can release it in a smaller way, make your money back, and keep going.

You can't do anything yourself on TV... unless you have a LOT of money, but you can do an independent movie.

One of the reasons the producers' credit has been so weakened in recent years, and given to people who didn't deserve it, was that people didn't understand what producers did.

You know, independent films have been institutionalized, practically. Every studio has got a boutique arthouse label. There's like, 18 different independent film-financing funds. In fact, I think the children of those films are getting made. A more interesting question is whether those films are going to get seen and appreciated.

Early on it was much easier to play leads, but now independent movies are being co-opted by the studio system, and they want bigger names to guarantee more audience and more numbers.

I know it's good when I see a smaller film get recognized because it means more publicity for them. Any way to get the word out, I'm just learning about this. The end of this distribution sentence is the scariest part, which is when you start producing and directing. Now the movies are a little more like your children. You now spent years of your life and then it just dumps in one day and you think what happened? It doesn't always happen.

People always ask why I don't make independent movies. I do make independent movies - I just make them at Sony and Paramount.

People say, "How do you get into the British film industry?" There is no British film industry, there are just people making films and finding their own way. It's not like in the States where there are studios and there's an actual infrastructure to it; there's just nothing here. You make it from scratch a lot of the time.

The biggest challenge is how you get money for independent films, in these ever-changing times when most people don't really want to invest in that anymore.

Obviously there's Netflix, iTunes, and Amazon and all these other outlets. Fake It So Real is now on Fandor, and I think people have actually seen it there, which is fine.

A lot of people get stuck, like, "Oh, if it's made by a studio, it can't be independent." Often they link it to the source of financing, or how it's distributed, but I don't really know how you can. A filmmaker will take his money from anywhere. It doesn't matter.