Michael Cimino Quotes

I didn't know I wanted to do films until I started to do them. Very few films are made in Mexico and film-making belonged to a very specific group, a clique.

I'm interested to see what happens to Spike Lee with limited resources, you know? I love Spike Lee's movies. But you know what? I kinda liked his movies when he used to scramble and fight more for them.

It would be nice to make a movie that other people want to make, because every one of these movies, I basically have to find the only company in the world that's willing to make it, and it's always a big challenge. I end up spending a tremendous amount of energy and time trying to get money to make these movies and it's exhausting.

In a movie, you have to be mindful that no budget is going to be able to deal with running around the globe at every whim of the writer.

The lifeblood of my career has been independent film.

Movies require so many moving pieces to align that it really is a miracle that anything is made!

It used to be the case that studio executives like Robert Evans, Darryl Zanuck, and David Selznick would put aside money for what they wanted to be great movies regardless of whether they would perform well with the box office.

More than often, what you see, or what we've been able to recreate, has usually been a tampered-with version of what I have in my head, because the original idea has always been bigger. Every time I am in the mode of creating a show, there's always some level of gravity that comes in play, either of a monetary sort, or there's a space issue.

I think making small movies reminds you of the effort. When you make big movies, the effort is to fight for freedom. When you make small movies, the effort is making the day, making the budget, and it's great, too.

Hollywood is a deeply odd place. There are so many factors that have to go perfectly, so many schedules and visions that have to snap together for a film even to be made, much less be good.

I got so good at writing to a budget, my brain was restricting myself. I'd write, "It's a stormy night." Then I'd cross out stormy. I'd write: "It's a calm night." Then I'd cross out night. It's noon. Because you know how much night costs. You know how much rain costs. Nothing comes free in movies.

Everything that I've done so far has had a bigger budget than the last, but I've never ever felt the benefit of the bigger budget because the ideas always exceed the budget.

I think part of making movies is dealing with restrictions of freedom and budget. I'd rather deal with restrictions of budget. It's better to feel free within any budget.

At the end of the day, you're trying to make a certain film within a certain budget. Those rules never change.

The business of taking a book and transforming into a script to make this thing called a film - it's a mysterious process to me; sometimes it works.

'Winter's Bone' really suited having a lower budget. It would be so hard rolling into a rural setting, a place where people are poor, and to be thinking you've got $10 million to make a piece of entertainment.

A lot of us who are creative and have all these great ideas just don't have the money to do it.

I always say that I'm a filmmaker, not a factory. I don't have to churn out films every six months.

I think of all my movies as home movies! It's just that some are more expensive than others.

'Shotgun Stories' and 'Take Shelter'... I was willing to make those with no money and no time. With 'Mud,' I just wanted to protect it until I could have the resources. It's a real tricky movie.

'Imitation Girl' is a feature written and directed by Natasha Kermani. She's one of the founders of Illium Pictures who co-produced 'Pod.'

I don't get to make many features. It's not like that's something I can just snap my fingers and make happen.

I wish I was making movies back in the days when John Ford made movies and you were a director under contract to a studio. John Ford had years when he made three movies in a year.

'Tangerine' was less than half the budget of 'Starlet,' and 'Starlet' was already a microbudget film. A director always wants more time, and we had a limited amount of resources.

No studio picks up the phone after seeing 'Dogtooth' and goes, like, 'We have the next superhero movie.' Though if one did, that would be an interesting studio to work with.