Rider Strong Quotes

What I learned from my go-round with 'In the Heights' is that it's tough to make a movie. In Hollywood, even the people in charge have people in charge.

I've tried not to get sucked into the Hollywood hierarchy system. Personally, I don't like it when people are deferential to me because I'm an established filmmaker. It's a blue-collar sensibility.

I think Hollywood has a class system. The actors are like the inmates, but the truth is they're running the asylum.

I didn't know I wanted to do films until I started to do them. Very few films are made in Mexico and film-making belonged to a very specific group, a clique.

I don't do divas. I don't do entourages. I don't do the Hollywood crap.

High-level actors can be all about their close-ups and the size of their trailers. I'd heard these horror stories of how a really powerful actor can come in and change your script.

You can think of Hollywood as high school. TV actors are freshmen, comedy actors are maybe juniors, and dramatic actors - they're the cool seniors.

I do, in some senses, feel that Hollywood and Washington are similar in that, first of all, they are, again, male-dominated worlds, which is not unusual. There are a lot of industries like that, but also, there's a lot of politics when it comes to the ins and outs of getting things done, getting a film made.

Hollywood is a whole other level of crazy. I've never met so many assistants who have assistants. It's a stratified society on its own.

I'm from Hollywood. That's where we make movies and TV shows... I'm not from down here in men-fus ten-uh-see, okay?

Most filmmakers, if not all, come from a place of privilege, if only because of the expense.

Working with a Hollywood unit was absolutely delightful. I felt like an actor. I was treated like one. I performed like one.

I would fail if I had to work with stars. And I also can't afford to work that way. I can't afford to have special circumstances for rarified individuals. So, I work with actors who have given me a sign that they're willing to work in these more humble circumstances, in real-life locations.

In real life, when you speak with each other you overlap each other, so you can't fake that. Like especially when you have no cut. In a regular film when you want people to overlap you cut it that way. It's mixing and editing.

The whole idea of hobknobbing and schmoozing and the concept of an "elite" class of celebrities better than the common people has always made my stomach turn.

If you have to ask then you don't deserve an answer.

Casting is really a black art. It's a huge part of directing and it's the most invisible. It's one that people don't really think about or talk about. But you can really destroy your movie by casting it badly before you've shot a foot of film. And yet there are no guidebooks for it, there's no rule book to tell you how to do it. It's all your own experience and your own sensibility and your own intuition.

I like film because it brings you very close to the absurd reality that you might spend a day shooting and not get a single image that you like or works, and you won't really know for a few days at least as you wait. It connects you and grounds you to a material reality and a patience that seems lost with digital. I also think the grain texture remains forever different, and in my opinion, what I find to be more beautiful.

If we're not going to take full advantage of digital, then 35mm is a better medium. Especially for shooting dramas - I have no problem with 35mm.

The intellectual is called on the carpet... Don't you conceal something? You talk a language which is suspect. You don't talk like the rest of us, like the man in the street, but rather like a foreigner who does not belong here. We have to cut you down to size, expose your tricks, purge you.

I structure the scripts and work on them on films and work on scenes with writers and but I haven't written a script myself, I really respect what they do and I'm fortunate I get to work with people that I really enjoy working with and we all kind of spitball and work together on these things, but I haven't written a script yet.

Filmmakers have to find the right materials to match their [voice].

I was extremely shy. And I simply didn't know how to go about it. It seemed a lot easier to write than to make films. All I needed was a pencil and a piece of paper, whereas filmmaking was something I had no access to.

When it's just a few scenes and a couple of actors behaving in a room, I feel very confident with that.

It's such an old-fashioned attitude to make people feel like they're not good enough for your clothes. That's so negative and so old-fashioned and wrong.