Francis Ford Coppola Quotes

My heart is in independent film-making. For me, it's where the fun, gritty storytelling is being told.

I think indie films are really important, because they show the studios and the audiences when they see them, great stories. Really interesting, small stories.

I don't want to do a history lesson. I don't think cinema should be about that. Cinema should be about emotions.

I'm trying to do the kind of projects that I want to see in the theatre.

Comic-strip artists generally have very modest ambitions. Day to day, we labor to fit together all these little moving parts - a character or two, a few lines of dialogue, framing, pacing, payoff - but we certainly don't think of them adding up over time to some larger portrait of our times.

I wouldn't take a directing job if I didn't think it was enriching life.

I want to make movies that I want to see, and what I miss and I'm not seeing.

I wanted to do different movies. I wanted to do deeper movies. More human movies based on human feelings.

At least I want to be making films that are somehow born out of me that are stories I want to tell. The challenge is figuring out how to do it where you can make them personal, yet still deliver to an audience a film experience that is satisfying and emotional, and that's what I'm trying to do.

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.

I never - when I go into a project, I don't think too much about if there's a lot of other sci-fi books out there or horror books or whatever. I just tell the stories I want to tell, and I think that is evident on the page.

I really want to do film, but I want to do the right film. The truth for me is that I'm really driven by stories. So there are stories I want to tell, and if it's a good story then I want to do it, whatever genre it is.

The truth is that sometimes art may not exactly reflect one's personal politics, but the story, the drama, the thing you're trying to say, might want to go in a certain direction, and while it may seem like it has resonance with things that are happening topically, you kind of want the world you're creating to have its own internal logic.

I don't want to make movies for kids, and I don't want to make movies for adults either.

What writer wants to make compromises with story? Story is the only reason you're in it.

I don't want to deal with big, grand themes in my stories; art has nothing to do with themes. When you deal with themes, you are not creating; you are lecturing.

There's a tremendous intellectual fervor among independent filmmakers, and that has to be cultivated.

I feel like the great filmmakers who have a true voice, yeah they take the notes, they understand the notes, but it's really about the notes underneath the notes. When you do a test screening and somebody says, 'Well, I didn't like the love story,' but it was probably just too long.

I don't want to make a movie till I have an idea I have to make. I don't want to make a movie just to make a movie.

I would not have so many scripts being driven by demographics. The play's the thing - not the 18-35 year old male age group.

I know that movies are basically meant to be entertainment, but I'm not that interested in entertainment.

My goal is to make as many films as possible about different aspects of American life.

Going forward, I would love to work with directors like Rian Johnson and Joss Whedon; people like that who are doing big films but do have really independent voices. That's kind of what I want to focus on, is always working with people with at least an independent point of view, even if it's not an independent film.

I thought Mia Hansen-Love was a true auteur, and I always wanted to work with her. Mia's empathy for her characters and her ability to use the language of cinema to communicate real human depth is extraordinary. She's a humanist.

If I'm going to make a genre film, it has to be personal and it has to be good.