Mary Ellen Mark Quotes

In a movie, you're raw material, just a hue of some color and the director makes the painting.

Movies are collaborative, and that's part of what makes it a great experience. They're different from a lot of other art forms, but also it makes it seem like when you see the final product, you go, 'I wouldn't have done that. I wouldn't have done this.'

In a film, you have to externalize things that are internal and of course it becomes a debate about to what extent you do that.

As I've gotten less righteous, less pedagogic, I have become more loving of the artificiality, the art form, the imitation of life in film.

The only thing approaching art in a movie is the script.

It would have been tough for anyone to adapt 'Push' - an amazing but wrenching novel by Sapphire - for the screen, and I think director Lee Daniels made interesting choices, particularly with Precious' fantasies. In my view, some of them work and some do not, but they are definitely provocative directorial choices.

Filmmaking is a creative process so there is a lot of collaboration that happens on set between an actor and director, but at the end of the day, we're there to actualize the director's vision and things happen organically.

In film, you're painting a canvas. I got really excited about that.

Many people who have watched 'Pieta' have said my filmmaking has become more objective.

I love more than anything looking at a movie scene by scene and seeing the intention behind it.

I'm drawn to cinema, especially when you're on a project that feels like it's going to be a challenge.

Making 'Coraline' was one of the great filmmaking experiences of my life.

A screenplay is really an instruction manual, and it can be interpreted in any number of ways. The casting, the choice of location, the costumes and make-up, the actors' reading of a line or emphasis of a word, the choice of lens and the pace of the cutting - these are all part of the translation.

My two great loves when I'm shooting are working with great actors and composing images.

The challenge with 'Watchmen' is making sure that the ideas that were in the book got into the movie. That was my biggest stretch. I wanted people to watch the movie and get it. It's one of those things where, over time, it has happened more.

Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls.

I just produced Criminal, this remake of Nine Queens, and one of the things that appealed to me about Nine Queens is that it was a performance piece, and that's the most fun.

I found it very difficult to explain to someone why you did a film. It's not like having a conversation.

I have never been sorry to see my sets being struck, provided they are well photographed. They're not works of art but part of making a film.

A film is a great deal about what you see, and the silhouette of a character tells you a lot. I'd love to go into film costume.

Things get very distorted when you do a movie, weirdly so.

I love David Fincher - even though it was just two scenes, I loved the way we worked and could tell by the way he was shooting it that this was going to be an affective movie to say the least.

Especially as a director on 'West Wing,' I directed a lot of different things in a lot of different ways and really stretched my wings.

What I like most about directing is creating a world more so than anything. To me, the music is the wrapping paper on that world.

It's only the filmmaker. The script is really, really second. And there's a huge gap between filmmaker and script for me. I almost don't care about the story that they're telling; I really only care about who wants to tell it.