Character-Driven Films Quotes

Marvel has this tradition, and I think that Sony has this tradition too, of hiring directors for Spider-Man who are dramatic directors. That are directors who are interested in human beings, in characters, in drama, and who are really good with actors. That kind of feels like a Spider-Man director to me. And because Spider-Man is always as big as the films that are being made at Marvel, it always is character and story. You can never take that out.

People love to talk about how the '70s are the only time they made movies about characters, and adult movies, and complicated people. But in the '80s, they got away with some of those too.

The thing for me, and I can only really judge this by what I respond to myself as an audience member, I really only respond to a movie if I'm interested in the people who are in it. It's really that simple. If I'm not, then it's all noise.

Hollywood... that's not going to be my niche at all. If anyone is going wants to work with me, I would think it's going to be independent films. I'm not 22!

Generally speaking I would say I enjoy the smaller films more because there's a less sense of pressure and often the material is more unusual.

The movies I did before were movies with a lot of characters, a lot of locations, and low budgets, which meant that I was running all over the place and never had the chance to build a relationship with an actor. I was always having big, strong relationships with the cinematographers or editors or production designers, but not with the actors.

I tend to prefer the smaller movies because they shoot more efficiently and so you're are able to maintain that momentum of the character a little more easily.

I'm no longer interested in being in big commercial films.

A lot of times I'll make films that are mostly character-driven films - stories that involve people. Like, I make the joke: I like to make movies about human beings that live on Earth.

The idea is to choose good roles and good movies. I don't want to act simply to remain in the industry, nor am I here to do glamour roles.

They make three types of movies, and if you don't make one of those three, you have to find independent financing: It's either big-action superhero tent-pole thing, or it's an animated film, or it's an R-rated, raunchy sex comedy. They don't make movies about real people.

There is an audience out there for literate films - slower, more observant, more human films, and they deserve to be made.

Everybody wants blockbusters. I like to see a few pictures now and then that have to do with people and have relationships, and that's what I want to do films about. I don't want to see these sci-fi movies, and I don't want to do one of those. I don't understand it.

I prefer smaller movies because they tend to be more about character than about story.

Generally speaking I would say I enjoy the smaller films more because there's a less sense of pressure and often the material is more unusual. But in "Iron Man" it was kind of like both worlds colliding because there was a lot of improvisation, not that we improv-ed in the scenes but to discover the actual scenes themselves.

On the one hand, you have these huge budget films that cost millions of dollars. They are effects driven, they don't have well known actors in them, and they are making money. Well, some of them are. One the other hand, you have Stallone and Statham, and guys like DeNiro and Pacino, and Costner, who are all trying to make movies about real people. They are interested in character driven projects.

I don't like doing action movies. They're not that interesting... it's fun to do the physical element but the really fun stuff, like running into exploding buildings, they won't let you do. There's too much money riding on you not getting hurt. But yes, there's something exhilarating in just sitting on a beach with somebody having a real conversation. There's something exhilarating about being open and honest.

I love Marlon Brando and James Dean. That was when it was all about the star and the script. Nowadays, everything has to be action-packed.

It's hard to get a movie made about characters these days. We're in a climate where, unless it's based on a toy or it's a superhero where somewhere it ends in man - like Spider-Man, Superman or Iron Man - it's hard to get it made.