Martin Scorsese Quotes

Initially, I had started doing theater, where the actor has a direct relationship to the audience. So, moving into film and television disconnected me. When you do a film, you start to get the character, and then it disappears for a year before it's released and you get feedback.

The main objective of our cinema is to entertain. If you can pass on a message at the same time, that is fantastic, but if the audience does not feel they are going to be entertained by the film, they are not going to watch it. There are many examples of very responsible and great films that are being made, but nobody goes to watch them.

The first 50 years of the cinema were absolutely great years. Original minds were at work establishing the ways to tell a story. And what is happening now is a copying, a pastiche-ing of what was done by great men.

Film is changing, and it can't help but keep changing.

When someone goes to watch my film in the theatre, they won't remember the last four articles they read about me. Instead, they will think about the last film I did.

Entertainment, really, is a dying industry.

Movies were never an art form, they were entertainment. It just evolved into an art form from there, and it's still evolving in different ways.

The business has changed, and some people can keep talking about theatrical in these wondrous terms - it will survive, but it becomes narrower what you can make. So the films I'm most interested in, studios - or even the independents - aren't making them. I'm mostly interested in people.

Cinema now can't be just about introspection and atma manthan; such topics won't work.

I treasure the dark hours in a theatre. But I don't think that, if a film does not reach the theatre, it is, therefore, not a film.

It's important for cinema to keep on evolving: for people, and not only teenagers, to be able to go to a movie that has huge epic scope but has an intellectual and real story to tell.

Every five years, there is a shift in cinema space, but we are slow to catch that. Young people understand that shift.

I feel the primary job of cinema is to entertain.

Cinema has evolved, and it is high time we stop policing it so rigorously.

You don't leave the film alone. You have a new audience, and you have a new medium. Why would you leave it alone? Film is not an antique. It's not a relic. It's not a Leonardo da Vinci. I don't want someone painting over a da Vinci or Rembrandt. But these movies aren't that.

I'm really interested in making movies that people see: I've made a lot of independent films and it's really depressing when no one sees them.

'Cabaret' was one of the first pieces of musical theater I saw that showed the possibilities of what musical theater can do.

I'm neither excited nor worried when my film releases. As an artiste, I would definitely want people to like my work... that's why we are here. But I don't really sit up and look at reviews. I have never sat down to ponder over what others have to say.

I just make movies and hope people appreciate them.

I'm very proud of the work I do, but I genuinely can't involve myself with an audience as early as somebody who's not part of the film can. So there's that side of theater that appeals to me, where you give something and the response to what you've created is a communion between you and the dark that contains however many people. It's thrilling not having a reflection other than through the people you're communicating with. But people ask, "What do you prefer?" and I don't have a preference. I love them both. I really do.

Am I nostalgic for film? … I mean, it’s had a good run, hasn’t it? You know, I’m not nostalgic for a technology. I’m nostalgic for the kind of films that used to be made that aren’t being made now.

I sometimes close my eyes during a show because I have drawn a picture of an audience enjoying the show more on the back of my eyelids.

I never want movie theaters go away. It is the greatest time out on the town. You go out, it's a great place to go, great location, great hang, great date, good place to be with friends. But as an actor who works hard at making movies, I am glad that no matter what people can see your movie on. It's hard to keep a theater for long time; there are so many movies, so when you leave a theater, you're just glad there's a life for your movie.

On an independent film you're lucky if you get one, but ostensibly the job is the same. There's very little difference, apart from the knowledge that there's a captive audience at the end of it - which you can't always guarantee with a movie.

I love making movies, I love trying to make them as good as I can, but I feel like sometimes the marketing and publicity around the movie, becomes the most important part of it.