Bennett Miller Quotes

In America, I don't think you have the creative freedom that I'm used to. Traditionally, it's a producer's cinema here.

It's nice when you're working in Hollywood and there's a movie you'd like to see that no one is making anymore. You make it yourself.

As long as somebody finances you, can make a film and get it seen any place and in any language; then, hopefully, it's a success.

In my day, the only people who achieved real independence were my father, Mary Pickford and Charles Chaplin, who, with D. W. Griffith, formed United Artists. Other than that, everybody belonged to the big studios. They had no say in their own careers.

They say now in America that final cut doesn't mean anything. As Harvey Weinstein said to some film-maker, 'You can have final cut. I'll open your film in Arkansas.'

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.

The studios basically, besides developing some material, their strength is distribution. Distribution in any other business is a cost that you incur. You know, in a trucking business, you eat it. In a film business, distribution is a profit center.

When you do a movie in the studio system, there's a committee. A committee of six or seven people you answer to. There's two or three producers, a studio executive and one or two people above that studio executive.

Paramount Pictures is a perfect partner for Electric Entertainment, with the most stable group of executives in Hollywood and unparalleled global promotion and distribution reach.

I want to make my own movie.

Actors dread working with studios because they dictate what you do in a way that independent movies can't.

You can have 10 bucks to 10 million bucks and if you got a crew, imagination and a lot of people willing to turn in some work next to nothing, you going to have a feature. But you can't get beyond how expensive marketing the movie is, it's so crushing.

I've worked on so many films where the script is one thing and then, somewhere down the line - on set, sometimes - it changes, and there's zero I can do about it.

I know some directors get very involved in trailers and posters. Some even cut their own. I stay completely away from it. I just see my job as making a film.

With an independent film, you have a little more freedom, and you also have less money, so you're sort of struggling to get it done, to get something that works. With a big studio, everything is there for you, and it's easier.

Content financing is a difficult beast no matter what era of Hollywood we're talking about.

I like to produce my own movies.

Gerald's Game,' we could not have made it at a studio without substantive changes to the story.

Before I made 'Sweetback,' I had a three-picture deal with Columbia and enough juice, if I was real clever with it, to proclaim that I wanted to do an independent film.

I very much enjoy my freedom creatively but I also would love to make one of those big Hollywood films that costs a lot of money and has a lot of people running around with cell phones and all that insanity.

Film and television are very different. On the TV show, we do seven or eight scenes a day, so time and money are of the essence, and we have zero room for creativity because you've got to do each scene in only five takes. Whereas, on a film, you have an entire day to film one scene, so you have so much time to choose how you want to fill in a scene.

When you make a film you make a film. You don't think about how it will be marketed.

It is difficult to make movies on your own terms and also to make a film and convince somebody to have faith in it.

You've got the movie, distribution, and marketing. All are equally important, so educate yourself on how to do the best you can at each of them.

I don't see Hollywood as the big enemy, because this is where the money is, and not all of the companies are doing studio movies. I'm not tempted to sell out. If I'm going to become well known, I want it to be for something I'm proud of.