James Gunn Quotes

Hollywood's a mecca, but it's not the final answer. You pick up a camera anyplace in the world, you can make a movie.

I don't make movies because I think audiences will want to go see them.

If you want to make movies you need to think on a micro-micro level and figure out how to make them for nothing with people who really care about your movie and really want to make it.

When we do a movie with the studios, they wouldn't be asking us to do it, I don't think, if it was a movie they wanted to get into themselves. What you see is what you get with us, so they let us do what we want to do.

Going forward, I would love to work with directors like Rian Johnson and Joss Whedon; people like that who are doing big films but do have really independent voices. That's kind of what I want to focus on, is always working with people with at least an independent point of view, even if it's not an independent film.

I think you do independent movies because you're looking to cut away from commercial movies.

I'm from that world where I feel so comfortable making small independent movies.

My good films were independent and my bad films were not.

On the last couple of movies I made - big-budget Hollywood movies - I really missed being able to create my own material.

The whole reason one wants to do lower budget films is because the lower the budget, the bigger the ideas, the bigger the themes, the more interesting the art.

In the beginning, it wasn't even a question of deciding I'm going to do independent film and not commercial films - I wasn't being offered any commercial films, and there wasn't an independent scene.

It's nice when you're working in Hollywood and there's a movie you'd like to see that no one is making anymore. You make it yourself.

You don't always just have to do an indie movie to feel like you're controlling it with a few people that you really have connected with, creatively. You can do it on a bigger scale.

I feel like everyone wants to make a movie that they feel passionate about watching.

If you're clever enough and creative enough to get a good film made, then you should be clever enough and creative enough to find ways to get it out there, one being something like Jameson First Shot.

I'm looking for little movies that are good instead of picking scripts in pursuit of superstardom.

I like the intimacy of independent films and I like the idea that people aren't being paid necessarily as much money as some one on a studio film.

In a sense I feel very much a part of the cinema now in a way where when I come back to the theater now I feel like a visitor. The cinema is really what I enjoy. I want to do more independent movies.

My heart is in independent film-making. For me, it's where the fun, gritty storytelling is being told.

Above all, film is a business... Independence is a really cool thing as you can be a bit more bold, and take a few more chances with what you do.

I believe in making movies very inexpensively; I think that way too much money is spent on making movies. Enough movies are being made, but not enough experimental ones.

With independent film, as an actor, you have more involvement - it's very much more connected. It's not just like I'm showing up and there's another actor on the call sheet; you're very attached to it.

Often, people who want to make interesting films simply don't have the money to do it.

In 1962, we created the Filmmakers' Co-Op because nobody wanted to distribute our films. If we had the Internet in those days, we wouldn't have needed the Co-Op.

I'll still make movies for studios, but my editing process will be much further removed from the studio system. Because I don't understand it. I don't understand the whole testing-numbers thing. It is not how I want to make movies. So if that's how they do it, then I don't think I want to do it.