James Mangold Quotes

Cinema has the capacity to be so physiological.

Because I've made a film with such an amazing director as Tarantino, I'm much more conscious of working with good directors from now on, so that's what's important to me. I don't really care about making a big movie - I just want to make good ones.

You can recognize almost immediately if the film you're watching is the product of some kind of a hive mind or the result of a personal vision and genuine collaborations. 'Manchester by the Sea' reminds us of the potential of the latter and, for that reason, is the kind of work that makes me, as a filmmaker, want to continue. It's inspiring.

Nobody sets out to make a bad film - I shouldn't say 'nobody.' Some people certainly don't care.

I am keen to do quality films; it is not quantity that I am looking at.

I don't think a film that has no effect on people or society is a good film.

I don't want to make a half-assed film. It's not my area of expertise.

My approach has always been to put 100% into the movie I'm making right now. I think sometimes filmmakers put too much thought into the grand franchise they're going to build. And guess what? If the first movie doesn't work there is no franchise, so I'm always concentrated on making the best, best possible movie right now.

I don't really care about making a big movie - I just want to make good ones.

Here's what I want from a book, what I demand, what I pray for when I take up a novel and begin to read the first sentence: I want everything and nothing less, the full measure of a writer's heart. I want a novel so poetic that I do not have to turn to the standby anthologies of poetry to satisfy that itch for music, for perfection and economy of phrasing, for exactness of tone. Then, too, I want a book so filled with story and character that I read page after page without thinking of food or drink because a writer has possessed me, crazed with an unappeasable thirst to know what happens next.

You should know what makes one photo brilliant and another. Why one illustration is instructive and another is banal. Why one blurb is clever and another is trying too hard. Why one video is brilliantly entertaining and another is cheesy. Bottom line: you should want to do great work with a great team-no matter the cost.

When you have a good movie, it's hard to categorize it. It's everything. It makes you laugh, makes you cry and makes you think.

When you go into a starring position and you're carrying a movie, it's important that people like it. So I only do things that I can connect with in some sort of way, or that I can identify with.

I want to make films that make people laugh hard, and I am not afraid to walk away from this business tomorrow.

Stories are the creative conversion of life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience. They are the currency of human contact.

My films ought to be judged on whether they're entertaining or good as films, but not on the political view necessarily. I'm trying to be morally responsible and no more. I don't have an agenda I'm trying to push.

The voice gets to the soul of a person more than any other instrument. Because it's the voice. It sings talks, it cries, it laughs, it squeals, it barks, it shouts it whispers, There is no other instrument that can do that. We're born with it.

The unity of effect or impression is a point of the greatest importance. It is clear, moreover, that this unity cannot be thoroughly preserved in productions whose perusal cannot be completed at one sitting.

A laugh is the loud echo of a sigh; a sigh the faint echo of a laugh.

I think what's important for myself and anyone else who wants to create a film, or art, is [to] make sure that they have something to say, that they want to share something important, express something important.

A writer is trying to create believable people in credible moving situations in the most moving way he can.

What seems to me the highest and the most difficult achievement of Art is not to make us laugh or cry, or to rouse our lust or our anger, but to do as nature does-that is, fill us with wonderment.

At the end of the day, I'd much rather do a piece about people in a story that I find riveting and intriguing and moving, versus really carrying some kind of heavy political agenda on my sleeve. That's not who I am.

A movie that is unable to elicit emotion isn't a movie.

Going back and forth between wanting to be respected artistically and wanting to move people is its own challenge.