William Atherton Quotes

Filming is like a long air journey: there's so much hanging around and boredom that they keep giving you food.

A director is someone who presides over a series of accidents.

... when I left the stage door and sought my orientation among real people I was in a wilderness of unpredictables in an unchoreographed world.

It's a big honour to have people be excited about a movie that you make. That's the one thing that you want.

People often call and say: "Can you help me to get Bill Murray in our movie." But I'm always like, "well I don't know how to do that!" I've sometimes tried and not been able to get him but then I'll suddenly be very surprised by the thing that he will suddenly decide to do.

I think about the period of, like, the '70s and early '80s where nobody had money to make big movies and there was no CGI or anything like that and people had to get super creative. And then, you know, when you've got somebody who can paint you any picture on a computer and you get hundreds of millions of dollars to make a movie, its almost like the creativity diminishes somewhat.

People don't really look forward to flying that much. It's like they want to get to the place, but they don't look forward to the experience.

I want to make movies that people see. I really think that movies are the most popular form of story telling ever and have such a huge impact on culture when they do.

I know how hard it can be to communicate in a different country, find your way around, and deal with the mentality of other people and different cultures.

People always ask why I don't make independent movies. I do make independent movies - I just make them at Sony and Paramount.

As ridiculous as it is for anybody who knows how movies are made, there were people who actually wrote in reviews that this picture [Bad Influence] had been put out to capitalize on the scandal. Which, of course, would have been impossible.

The movie business has always been like the wild-catting oil business. Everyone wants a gusher.

I think it's a total fallacy for people to say, "You couldn't make those old movies today." I think there's more ways to get a movie made today than ever in the history of the entertainment industry. It's a very exciting time to work in movies, if you're a creative person looking to make a very personal, weird vision.

You do these movies, you give it out to the world and you really have no idea how people are going to react to you.

I ask people who don't fly, "How can you not fly when you live in a time in history when you can fly?"

Some people come to you because if you're in their movie, it'll help them raise money. And some people come to you because they think you're the person to play the part.

There are always tons of names on a movie of people that didn't actually do anything on that film. I feel bad for the people that busted their ass because they get the same credit as someone who did nothing. It's kind of a weird thing.

Hollywood is just so strange. It's like, everyone has a whole bunch of stuff boiling away and whichever one happens first, happens. That one, we're still in the process of, you know, trying to write the script. So, it's still very early stages at this point. Yeah.

This business [moviemaking] isn't easy. It's a hard business. You just keep plugging away until you figure it out. You write something you love and keep banging on people's heads until somebody lets you do it.

I've been on planes flying through thunder storms when the pilot says, 'ladies and gentlemen, we tried to fly around it but we can't so it's going to be rough'.And when a pilot says it's going to be bad, it's going to be rough. And you say to youself, boy, I could have got the train.

[Filming Payne] that was also the first time I worked with JoBeth Williams, which was also a case of not being the last time!

Hollywood is a cottage industry involving a very small number of people, and around the edges are enormous numbers of people trying to get into it and work.

The cool thing about making a Western is that people want to be in them. You rarely get the opportunity. With horror movies you are always trying to convince them. People in horror are always worried it's going to be this schlocky thing, and you're always trying to convince them that it's not. With Westerns, people immediately react with, "Oh, I've always wanted to do one."

Australia's not so bad with me, really, people are pretty cool with me at home, but in England it feels a little bit scary.

I'd always loved movies, but it wasn't some sort of desperate love of celluloid. It was literally like, "I want to write things, and I want people to see them more."