Lee Unkrich Quotes

I don't make movies to make a point; I make movies to tell stories about people.

Whatever films I make, the mandate is that it should touch the audiences and engage them from the first scene.

The motion picture is like a picture of a lady in a half-piece bathing suit. If she wore a few more clothes, you might be intrigued. If she wore no clothes at all, you might be shocked. But the way it is, you are occupied with noticing that her knees are too bony and that her toenails are too large. The modern film tries too hard to be real. Its techniques of illusion are so perfect that it requires no contribution from the audience but a mouthful of popcorn.

You can be moved by an animated film and not by a live action film. There could be great inspiration in and humanity in that animated story.

Every time I go to the theater, there's something about the atmosphere, seeing something unfold live in front of an audience, that you can't get out of your system.

A film engages you emotionally and intellectually.

I think films have to reach people and really grab them. That's what I hope to do when I make a film - to get under your skin and really make you think about something, and have a transporting time that takes you somewhere.

What I try to do - I mean 'try,' because you don't get there all the time - is to have impact with content. It's those moments in which you're trying to bring people beyond filmed theater. If I have an ambition, it's that.

Why movies are so powerful is because you are right in there and you stay in there until they want you to come out, and then you've really gone somewhere.

When art in general, and film in particular, succeeds is when it pulls you away onto a voyage. Then it's a good film.

I've always had an idealistic streak about storytelling in that I believe we owe more to audiences than repeatedly bludgeoning them over the head while stealing their lunch money. We owe them inspiration. That's why I'm more interested now in creating new heroes than hooking up jumper cables to old ones.

The big thing for me is to make films that you feel, whether you feel happy, whether you feel sad, whether you feel sick; it's to make the audience feel so that the next day they remember what they saw.

I like finishing a movie and having this living, breathing thing.

It's kind of the filmmaker's job to use visual, cinematic language in a way possible to tell a story that reaches and touches as many people as possible.

'Finding Dory' just stole my heart. Little Dory was the most adorable thing in the entire world, and Ellen DeGeneres killed the game. I liked the flashbacks to the past - it gave you a bit more perspective and appreciation for certain characters.

I want to create films that will speak to different parts of our hearts and brains, stories told from a different angle.

I think Hollywood is an incredible tool to teach people. It brings stories and information to the television screen, to the movie theater screens, that people get to empathize with.

A film sells feelings.

Filmmaking is essentially about entertainment, but it's amazing to realize that it has this other muscle that could actually help. Do you know what I mean? People permit entertainment to wash over them, but every once and a while, entertainment - and this is entertaining - also galvanizes something else and that would be a really good thing to have happen in this case.

We see films all the time, whether they have access to all kinds of intellectual property or artifacts, and the one thing that they don't get is story. So I think whether you're talking about a biopic or an action film or a science-fiction film that has all the CGI in the world, if you're not trying to connect with an audience, it doesn't really matter.

Movies are more likely than literature to reach deep feelings in people.

I'm drawn to filmmaking that can transport me. Film can immerse you, put you there.

When I am shooting, I am inside the theatre, when I am in the editing room, I am inside the theatre. I always try to feel what they will feel. I see a film, not as a director, but as the audience. If I am entertained, they will be, too.

I am not interested in entertaining people. I think being an actor provides an opportunity to give people an experience they can connect to, reflect on, learn from, laugh at.

I'll say, what makes me happy about making movies is, every once in a while through movies we find a kind of honesty. There's an honesty in fiction that's as effective or even more powerful than the honesty of our lives. We can find something that's genuinely true, like a chemistry between people or a statement that speaks to an audience.