Sam Levinson Quotes

I never 'say' anything in my work. I invent a world. Let others decide what is being 'said'.

I don't want to make films that give you the answer. If there is a message to my films - and I hope there isn't - it's to be open-minded.

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.

You make a movie, and if somebody reads something into it, then great, more power to him.

I'm not so presumptuous to feel that they're gonna get it right away, get exactly what I have in mind. I hope that they'll enjoy looking at it at any rate, whatever it is. And that's why I started writing stories on my work.

I want there to be hints of narrative everywhere in the image so that people can make up their own stories about them. But I don't want to have my own narrative and force it on to them.

I never heard one word in Pixar about, 'Will kids get this?' I don't think it's important that they get everything. I think that it's important that they get engaged, interested.

When I get a beautifully written piece of material, I immediately start imagining how I would interpret it. I love just daydreaming about it for months, breaking it down, seeing where I can spin something. How I can turn this into the most fun ride for the audience that I can make it? That's my job.

The essential nature of all filmed entertainment is that you area always straddling the line of whether or not you can realize something that you want to do.

I do like to wrap things up and leave some things to the readers' imagination.

I want to put concepts in front of people that make them laugh or smile or even hate what I do. I'm not interested in just putting clothes in stores.

Anything you can imagine, you can put on film.

It's funny, I'm very analytical in my real life, but in terms of my films, I try to not analyze them at all and let things just go into them and let them be what they are. I mean, people ask me to this day what 'The Squid and the Whale' stood for, and I have no idea except that it's an exhibit in the Natural History Museum.

I want to make movies that I want to see, and what I miss and I'm not seeing.

You have to make films you feel strongly about. And then hope you can find the audience.

When I make a movie, I have both a specific and vague, amorphous dream idea of what the movie is going to be. Of course, I don't actually know what it's going to be, but I'm still striving to get to some place with it.

What's cool is when you're able to give your audience imagination and you don't have to cage them in like animals.

From my very first movie, what was my concentration, my inspiration, was I didn't want to narrate something, I didn't want to tell a story. I wanted to show something, I wanted for them to make their own story from what they were seeing.

The gift of a writer as good as Dickens is not to explain everything; that way, the reader has, in terms of their imagination, somewhere to go.

The cinema is there to heighten the imagination; I have always tried to make sure it does so.

I look at the film as an opportunity to see some bountifully creative minds do something that I could not do - tell the story with images. I can't wait to see what they do.

I do a film because I like the story and I want to give life to a character - I don't necessarily have to agree with the director.

Look, I'm just a storyteller. When I make a film, I never want the film to become a vehicle of social propaganda.

I think when I start out writing, I always try to write the version of the movie that I want to go see. I don't mean it in a way that ignores the audience, but I really set out to make a movie that I want to see and that, hopefully, other people will want to go see it. So whatever's amusing to me, I guess, I throw it all in there.

We make films that we ourselves would want to see and then hope that other people would want to see it. If you try to analyze audiences or think there's some sophisticated recipe for success, then I think you are doomed. You're making it too complicated.