Scott Rudin Quotes

There are so many things that have to go right for a movie to be good that it's a miracle whenever one is.

You have a big success, and it's still not easy to make a movie.

Quality isn't about where the money came from or which company gets to put their name on the thing. What matters is who made the movie and why they made it.

When you go into a film, you read it, and something clicks for you, and you like it, and you sign on for it; you go for it. You know that this is going to be a good film, and that is your best hope. Past that, it's a crap shoot - you roll the dice.

'The Road' was a movie that has a good reputation, even though it wasn't released very well, but that's a movie I'm very proud of.

I think all my films can be enjoyed. In fact, they've often surprised me with how they're received.

I would love to do more films. I really like the whole process of doing that. I like how close you become to everybody.

I think 'War Eternal' - if I'm allowed to say it - for me, it's a masterpiece.

Quality cinema is not changing anything, everything is the same. The artistes and other people involved in these films get some recognition at international film festivals and award shows only.

The priority for me has always been good films.

The commercial success that came with Anjali Menon's 'Bangalore Days' helped me in getting my work noticed.

I was thinking I would love to make something that is a successful film that everybody sees, but I wasn't thinking about the actual dollar amount. I just wanted to make a great film that people responded to. That's always a good ambition because you'll never totally hit it.

I am so impressed with people who can really make a big movie, a good movie. The amount of work that goes into it is incredible.

Sometimes you feel you're making something really special and when it comes out you might still feel that way but for some reason it doesn't get the audience. So many things have to come together to get a creatively successful and financially successful film.

If you try to make interesting films, you're going to be disappointed most of the time. I choose just not to look at it that way. I don't look at American History X as a failure, or Fight Club as a failure, or 25th Hour as a failure, or Larry Flynt as a failure, or any of the movies that I care about that I've made that were not immediately successful. I'll stand with those movies any day over 90 percent of the movies that came out at the same time that made a hundred million dollars

That’s one of the nice things about writing, or any art; if the thing’s real, it just lives. All the attendant hoopla about it, the success over it or the critical rejection—none of that really matters. In the end, the thing will survive or not on its own merits. Not that immortality via art is any big deal. Truffaut died, and we all felt awful about it, and there were the appropriate eulogies, and his wonderful films live on. But it’s not much help to Truffaut.

The whole awards thing is great. Why? Because the Golden Globes, the Academy Awards, they put a focus on the industry, and that focus translates into people buying tickets to see movies or download films, legitimately download them. And it keeps us all at work. So I'm a big fan of award shows.

I always say one of my favorite things about making movies is finishing on that last day because I get to have my life back and let that go, and hopefully have a real sense of accomplishment at the end of it.

Maybe if we sit out for the next few years and let Clint Eastwood get a little experience, he's going to be a good director.

Sometimes, you can feel or see how a movie can... how you can do it. Sometimes it's just like seeing, "Can that work? Will people buy that? Can we do that?" And all those checkmarks.

When I'm introduced as a two-time Oscar winner, I'm happy that a film of mine has found an audience and some acclaim because that keeps me in business. A filmmaker's greatest concern is the ability to make future films, so it helps keep me in business.

When you are on the set, you have different departments - you got camera, sound, props, hair, makeup, catering, executives. Imagine each one of those are spokes on the wagon wheel. All the spokes come into a hub: the hub is the director. The wood the spokes go into are distribution and promotion; the steel wheel around the hub is the film. None of these have anything in common with each other.

An award does not change the quality of a book.

It is not so easy to obtain a reputation by a perfect work as to enhance the value of an indifferent one by a reputation already acquired.

I'm proud of "Shoot the Moon."