Kurt Sutter Quotes

I'm a documentary filmmaker by training. You got to start with the real people and the real place.

Of course, when you're making a documentary, you don't have actors, but nonetheless, there is a writing process that does take place in the editing room.

I think it's a lot easier to put together a reality show than to actually create a scripted show.

You should bear in mind that almost all my documentaries are feature films in disguise.

We ended up with 19 hours of footage and had to narrow it down to an hour and a half. Our instructions were to film everything that came up, including the more mundane moments.

To make a documentary is one thing, to make a feature film is quite another.

I make films about stories that I get interested in.

There are a lot of similarities with film and TV, but also a lot of differences, especially in the way they film stuff.

I was attracted to filmmaking in college because of my love of storytelling. You can have such an impact and reach a broader audience than conventional journalism.

There's the movie you write, there's the movie you shoot and the movie you edit, and often, you find that you're getting the same information out of a scene that you already have and a scene that's actually more powerful, so you have to make the tough decision to take it out.

Like every novelist, I fantasise about film. Novelists are not equipped to make a movie, in my opinion. They make their own movie when they write: they're casting, they're dressing the scene, they're working out where the energy of the scene is coming from, and they're also relying tremendously on the creative imagination of the reader.

When I write a screenplay, and when I direct, I always pull lines out.

I think you should make movies as long as the story dictates.

It's such a rich experience when you enter into a subject from a documentary point of view. It's hard for fiction to compete with that.

I love doing television; it's such a brilliant way to tell a story over six hours rather over the two hours of doing a movie.

Any film I've made, I've only really begun to understand in the cutting room. That's when the story shows itself to you, like a wreck coming out of the sea.

Most of my films have been documentaries, but I'm also very interested in narrative filmmaking.

I went to film school to make films just because you're in control of the story.

Feature filmmaking is a different kind of complication as documentary comes in the editing room.

Ruthless concern with story is what I learned in television.

Ultimately, I am very filmmaker oriented, as a producer.

That's the only way I can control my movie. If you shoot everything, then everything is liable to end up in the movie. If you have a vision, you don't have to cover every scene.

The problems I have with a flawed script are always revealed in the editing room.

I've always been a bit of a documentarian.

There are times when I'm driving home after a day's shooting, thinking to myself, That scene would've been so much better if I had written it out.