George Clooney Quotes

I like the intimacy of independent films and I like the idea that people aren't being paid necessarily as much money as some one on a studio film.

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.

When filmmakers are kept from making films, there's a lot of different reasons why. Sometimes you work on a film and cast it and do all the work and can be just a month away from shooting, and all of a sudden, the whole thing goes up in smoke. But I do think the advent of a digital revolution is going to provide people with opportunities to make films that they never would have had before. I think you can do some pretty credible stuff now with very, very little money. Which I think is great for young filmmakers.

Box office success has never meant anything. I couldn't get a film made if I paid for it myself. So I'm not 'box office' and never have been, and that's never entered into my kind of mind set.

I feel like everyone wants to make a movie that they feel passionate about watching.

I just want to make good films on my own wherever I can.

I'm so not interested in producing, other than doing my own work, producing my own films. I only do it as favors, for other people to get their films made.

For me, the movies I like are all independent. And getting an independent feature made, it's like you get down to the selling organs part, and it just loses some of its luster.

I don't make movies because I think audiences will want to go see them.

If you want to make movies you need to think on a micro-micro level and figure out how to make them for nothing with people who really care about your movie and really want to make it.

Since childhood, I'd dreamed of making a film, but producers in France and Germany wanted to make commercial films with chinoiserie. I refused.

I'll put it this way: with the kind of films that I do - creatively driven, with interesting directors and writers - I don't feel the need to work with the super established, top-tier directors that are out there.

We need people with foresight who are willing to make films with smaller budgets and accept smaller profits.

We have to make some movies we have passion for, respect for.

The amazing fact that one person can make his own film - I think animation is somewhat unique in that respect. I don't need to deal with lawyers. I don't need to deal with corporations. I don't need to deal with executives or agents or any of that. I can just sit at home and make a feature film. That's a wonderful experience. Each film I make gets more popular, more press and makes more money. So it's amazing that I've survived and actually prospered doing that sort of homegrown, cottage-industry filmmaking.

Independent films now, they want to give you $2 million to make it, 21 days to shoot it and they want 10 movie stars in it.

I think I'm pretty committed to staying. I'm not committed to not doing big movies, but I am committed to continuing to make smaller movies, not for the sake of making smaller movies, but because I think it's really invigorating to just go work with people and know that it might be awful.

When you're making a movie, you can't think anybody will ever see it. You've just got to make a movie for the values it has. The greatest films were made because someone really wanted to make them. And, hopefully, the audience will show up, too.

I think the movies that don't try to please people are movies that you respect more in the end.

It's true that I don't think I'd be a good director. If I were a director, I'd try to hire the best people I could and then leave them alone. I don't know much about cameras or lighting, so I'd make sure that I had a really good cameraman who understood lenses and lighting, and I say to him, "This is the scene we have to shoot and this is what I think it should be, you go do it." Same with actors. But really, very good directors who know everything do basically the same thing. They hire you and then they leave you alone.

I'd love to do more independent films.

I didn't have a lot of independent film connections. It really took until the digital film revolution came along that I realized that I could do it myself.

'Juno' really changed things for me and I get a lot of screenplays come in now, but I like to self-generate and I like to kind of pursue my own ideas. And I think the more personal the better.

I love doing independent films, but it's very hard to make a living that way.

My partner, Beth Alexander, and I want to produce smaller films, but commercially viable films that will enable me to make the kinds of movies I want to make.