Cinematic Interpretation Quotes

Everything I've ever written, I had a very distinct vision of what I wanted it to look like. But, other directors never do it that way.

I think it's counterproductive for actors to come to the set with well-thumbed copies of the book their film is adapted from.

When I do a film, usually I work from my director. That's my boss. The director is interpreting the writer's vision, and we all interpret it, and they create their own vision as well.

We're just like a movie based on a book-- almost, but not quite as good.

In my mind, there isn't as much of a distinction between documentary and fiction as there is between a good movie and a bad one.

I'm very manipulative towards directors. My theory is that everyone on the set is directing the film, we're all receiving art messages from the universe on how we should do the film.

I always felt once it goes into movie land, the book belongs to someone else.

I think that I altered history in 'Elizabeth,' and I interpreted history far more than Danny Boyle or Richard Attenborough did to 'Slumdog Millionaire' or 'Gandhi.' They took Indian novels or Indian characters and very much stayed within the Indian diaspora.

I do believe, and I will always believe, that Shakespeare on film is really something that should be tried more often because it is an opportunity to take the humanity that Shakespeare writes into characters and express it.

No film ever ends up exactly as you would like it to, but with minor exceptions, THX came out pretty much as I had visualized it, thanks to some excellent assistance -- and a whole lot of luck.

You either ignore the comic book and make a great movie or you stay very close to the comic book.

I've seen movies that are slavishly devoted to books but don't work because they haven't turned it into a movie: they've turned it into a dramatisation of the different scenes.

People will say, 'There are a million ways to shoot a scene,' but I don't think so. I think there are two, maybe. And the other one is wrong.

A movie is not a book. If the source material is a book, you cannot be too respectful of the book. All you owe to the book is the spirit.

When I do a novel, I don't really use the script, I use the book; when I did Apocalypse Now, I used Heart of Darkness. Novels usually have so much rich material.

I think that a movie can only be an adjunct or only a supplement to books, to different points of view, to scholars, historians and your own teachers.

I always say, I'm certain I changed 'Watchmen' less than the Coen brothers changed 'No Country for Old Men.' I'm certain of it. But you don't hear the Cormac McCarthy fans, like, up in arms about it. They should be. It's like an amazing Pulitzer Prize-winning book.

I'm also a huge cinephile, and I have witnessed that to honor the book literally word-for-word never makes a good movie.

I really love horror novels, horror films, that are pointing at deeper ideas and thematic meaning. It's a way of thinking about films differently; that's what I think I like the most about it. I love the fact that's it's pointing at a more mysterious world - that the world is more of a mysterious place than we tend to let ourselves believe.

Novelists get to direct the perfect films. We get to cast every part. We dress the set exactly as we wish.

I suppose drama can either take the place of a novel or can be very closely allied with it. It's quite customary to turn a successful novel into a film or a television series because you can dramatize and pictorialize a novel.

Will Smith played Chris Gardner better than Chris Gardner ever did.

People think, 'Oh, well how can 'The Hobbit,' which is one book, become three films?' But you can take one line from an appendice and it turns into a whole sequence.

I don't really say much about reviewers. It's a very tough job to get all of the depth of a movie all at once.

You can have a wonderful time doing a movie and believe in it completely, and then you see the final product, and it doesn't look anything like what you thought it was going to.