Rod Lurie Quotes

Different reactions while film test screening doesn't mean even the audience thinks ambiguity is a bad thing. But if you're asking them right away to start checking things off, they don't know what to do. I think at their best, it applies to when the audience knows what it is. Then, when they say, "Oh, well, I thought it was too boring in blah-blah-blah part," then you better pay attention to it. It's like going for the hamburger. Better be the good hamburger I went for.

When you ask a bunch of people to see a film, and then invite them to comment on it and tell them it's a work-in-progress, they feel bound to offer an opinion.

A lot of filmmakers hate testing movies. I love it because it's an audience medium. The biggest problem has been the prevalence of all these Internet sites. It's almost impossible to have a test screening without it leaking out on the Internet.

It's a big part of what we do - we test our movies extensively. I'm always there myself. It's sometimes difficult to sit through, especially if it's a version of the movie that's not working particularly well.

I learn more from the audience than I can from anybody else. Not from what they write on the scorecards, but how they respond to the movie while they're watching it - where they laugh and where they react.

I haven't read a review of one of my films for the best part of 10 years.

I like test screenings. I like to see a movie with an audience of strangers. I think it tells you a lot.

People test movies within an inch of their life so that the entire audience experience is a uniform one.

I'm gonna see 'Mission Impossible' Part 9 because I like Tom Cruise movies! But just because the box office has that one receipt from the ticket I purchased, doesn't mean it represents someone who liked it.

You look back on films sometimes and if they have not been as all-out successful as you anticipated you try to find reasons why maybe it didn't come off for audiences as well as you would have liked.

Our audience tells us what they love, what they don't like, and - worst - what they don't care about.

I look at films every day. I study. I coach.

I just feel that if people write about a film, then they should also write about audience's response.

The audience is never wrong.

I think the purpose of test screenings is different for the studio and for the filmmaker. For the studio, I think they want to know whether the film works or not.

When you sit and watch the film with an audience, the focus groups and the cards and all of that is the less what you're worrying about. When you watch a film with an audience you see what is working and what's not working.

Mad Dog Time is the first movie I have seen that does not improve on the sight of a blank screen viewed for the same length of time. Oh, I've seen bad movies before. But they usually made me care about how bad they were. Watching Mad Dog Time is like waiting for the bus in a city where you're not sure they have a bus line.

There's always gonna be criticisms, no matter what movie you do, no matter what. You can't please everybody, and it doesn't matter what the genre is. There's always gonna be a positive to a negative comment.

I had some great experiences, but there were times when films didn't do well right, especially after 'Vicky Donor.'

You cannot predict how well a film will do.

I don't know if it's fair to say that it's a bad time for movies. It seems to me that throughout the entire history of filmmaking, every year there have been about two really wonderful movies, about 10 others that are pretty good, and a whole pile of garbage.

Conversations about films are always funny. I would say a majority of people want to talk about what were the more obvious successes; the big box office films. Other people wanting to be more sensitive to you want to talk about the ones that maybe didn't make a lot of money, but they think you might have a special feeling about. And then other people sometimes want to help you by suggesting that you should have done this or that in the movie, that that would have helped you a great deal in whatever capacity.

Lola Montes is, in my unhumble opinion, the greatest film of all time, and I am willing to stake my critical reputation, such as it is, on this one proposition above all others.

To be honest with you, I don't know how even to articulate it at this point, because sometimes the real difference in the seasons perhaps will come in the way the viewership responds and the audience responds. The thing about the show is - we realign a lot about it once our audience watches it. We learn things that we can't even anticipate.

My films seem to be better understood and better received by the monthly publications. On television the first reactions are usually unfavorable.