George Tillman Jr. Quotes

I firmly believe that emotions are universal, and I know that when they connect with the audience, it works. There is no such thing as an entertaining or a serious film; there are good films and bad films. Good films will always find a vast audience.

I don't think people are ever going to a place where they're like, 'I'm over stories about character and love.'

I have to write for everyone. What really fascinates me is how you make films or make stories that can genuinely be shared by different groups.

The reason I think the shows I do are successful with a wider public is because they tap into something that's beyond dance and is about being told a story. That's what people want.

I love high concept movies, but they can only work if the source of inspiration is really human - if they're driven by pain and strong emotions. Once you connect the audience with that, then I swear you can take them on the craziest journey, and they'll come along.

Filmmaking is a language where you empathise with human situations. Unless you have empathy for characters, you shouldn't be a filmmaker.

Cinema is a director's medium; it's his story and his vision. If it's a good story, people will connect to it.

When I go for a project, I wonder what underpinning a project will have that's going to give the audience some emotional access to it.

A lot of the struggle I had with movies is I really loved moments and tones and feelings in a scene, and I loved creating those, but I never really had great stories to string them together.

You can sustain visual beauty and innovative visual ideas for a certain length of time, but in a two-hour experience, which is really what movies are, usually audiences - whether they know it or not - most want an emotional connection to character.

And that's what people want to see when they go to the theater. I believe at the end of the day, they want to see themselves - parts of their lives they can recognize. And I feel if I can achieve that, it's pretty spectacular.

Feelings are universal, and if an actor's doing his job, I think he's making people sit there, and if it's in a movie or a theatre, going 'Hmm, yeah, I know that... I know that.'

I try and create for the audience something that relates to real-life experience.

What I've realized is that a film operates both on the intellectual and emotional levels, and if you can find a way to tell a riveting story and draw ideas out of that, it's very powerful.

I'm not a purist - I like films that are narrated and films that aren't, films that are beautiful and films that are clumsy but heartfelt. Mostly, I just like a good story and good characters.

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.

We all do that thing which is the best in movies - we relate.

Whenever I perform, people get me because I'm talking about things that people can identify with and relate to. I'm not just up there doing jokey, jokey, joke.

What I've learned over the years is that the craft of songwriting is trying to take the personal and make it universal - or in the case of telling a story, taking the universal and making it personal.

I never sit down to write anything personal unless I know the subject is going to go beyond my own experience and address something larger and more universal.

You can be a smarty-pants director, but that won't matter if the movie doesn't work emotionally as well as intellectually.

If you don't have something that glues the audience to the screen, you're in trouble.

As long as your storytelling and emotional depth are intact, that's what people will focus on.

You need the audience to become invested in the characters and in order to become invested, they need to identify with the characters... and that's why the characters need to be real.

The interesting thing about movies, it's not always - y'know, you have to have structure etc and all those things, but an audience responds, in many ways, we walk away and certain things stay in our heads that are memorable.