Lee Unkrich Quotes

I've always tried to create music the way Kubrick makes film, just kind of mimicking consciousness. He has a way of mimicking this greater power.

When you look at a movie, you look at a director's thought process.

I know the movies that I've liked, and I know the experience that they've given me, so the goal is always to try to create a movie that I would like myself and that would knock me out, challenge me or intrigue me in some way. That's been my criteria for figuring out what I want to do, or also when I'm writing something or creating a scene.

It's amazing how everyone has their different ways of working. I like hearing about that process, reading about it. I have so much appreciation for movies because I understand how hard it is to make one. There is always something I gain from watching a movie, whether it's a silly romantic comedy or an art film.

The thing is, as a film director, you're essentially alone: You have to tell a story primarily through pictures, and only you know the film you see in your head.

When I make a movie, I have both a specific and vague, amorphous dream idea of what the movie is going to be. Of course, I don't actually know what it's going to be, but I'm still striving to get to some place with it.

The rules are: The only ego is the film, and you have to serve the film.

I honestly never wanted to direct. It was only when I started to work on 'Alexander the Great' that I realized I had to direct. I saw something so specifically in my mind, I could not leave it to someone else.

I make films about stories that I get interested in.

I want to do films that provide entertainment, but are also content-driven.

In the best of all possible worlds, directors would obsess about the quality of their storytelling, and not the details of their technical methods.

I think I came to film-making through writing. I started to write, and people, teachers, responded to my writing.

Luck, I never looked to make difficult movies on purpose. You make the films you can make.

You become the movie you are making.

With each of those projects I wasn't thinking about how the layout would really affect the story I was working on - it wasn't the content that was affecting the layout, it was, how I wanted to draw at that point in time.

The whole process of making movies and writing screenplays is visceral and intuitive.

When you direct a movie, you're basically looking at a story, the way you want to look at it. You bring that director's vision, and I'm totally open for that.

The directing of a picture involves coming out of your individual loneliness and taking a controlling part in putting together a small world. A picture is made. You put a frame around it and move on. And one day you die. That is all there is to it.

The director is the only person who knows what the film is about.

Cinema has become my life. I don't mean a parallel world, I mean my life itself. I sometimes have the impression that the daily reality is simply there to provide material for my next film.

You know as a director what you want, but the film is smarter than you, the film says no, the film says there's something more here.

Every movie has its uniqueness. You just do your best and go with it.

Sure, you always put some of your own experience into a film.

If it were all in the script, why make the film?

The most difficult part of making movies is to keep making them. Maybe, you could make the biggest hit in the world, but then the big problem is what to do next and how to maintain devoted to a certain instinct that I have about films.