Cinematic Style Quotes

I've recently enjoyed the Paul Thomas Anderson commentaries and the David Fincher commentaries.

We shot 'Breaking Bad' on film; we capture 'Better Call Saul' digitally. In the shooting of 'Breaking Bad,' we would have this steady, handheld, cinema verite sort of look, so we purposely went the opposite way with 'Better Call Saul' - locked in the cameras and made the movements smoother and more mechanical.

Coen brothers movies are not always what life looks like but it's definitely what life feels like.

My background is on the stage, so when I'd write movies, they'd be a lot like plays.

Wes Anderson's films, 6-year-olds are crazy about them.

I love Fincher, as he has a great atmosphere and intensity. Also, I grew up watching Hitchcock movies, and there was something elegant in the way he plays with you and plays with the character and tricks you.

I've never been a fan of directors who clutter a piece with all sorts of crazy preconceptions or weird ideas.

There's two aspects of film crafting that I'm very strict about, and that's how I move my camera and where I cut the film.

Film noir is not a genre. It is not defined, as are the western and gangster genres, by conventions of setting and conflict, but rather by the more subtle qualities of tone and mood. It is a film 'noir', as opposed to the possible variants of film gray or film off-white.

With 'Mask,' 'Smooth Talk' and 'Blue Velvet,' I loved the specific experiences so much. Each one was a specific filmmaker with a specific vision.

Critics can say what they like about the films, but very often, there's a certain expectation of documentaries that they're supposed to be like PowerPoint presentations. I see documentaries as movies. So when I see some critics writing that we could have done without the recreations altogether - well, perhaps.

Polanski's 'Chinatown' is a film that I have purposefully and consciously imitated, but 'Vertigo' is one that has got into my bloodstream. Every time I reappraise things that I've done, the influence is there, time and time again.

When you make a movie with Alejandro Amenábar, he very quickly... it was very clear you're kind of operating in his dream universe.

I'm a huge fan of Richard Curtis - there's real grief, real compassion in his films as well as cheekiness; it's a wonderful cocktail.

I don't use film in the way that the great auteurs do. I use film, the camera, to record as effectively and as perceptive as I am able what I want to say through the actors.

If I'm ever working on a set and anyone talks about a master shot, I say there is no master shot. Before I even went to film school, I learned about movies by being in a British feature film, where everything was shot master shot, mid-shot, close-up. But I reject the idea of a master shot. You don't shoot everything mechanically; you find imaginative ways that serve the action.

I'm inspired by film-makers such as Ridley Scott, David Fincher, Orson Welles.

The only thing that surprised me about 'Lincoln' is that most of the critics who reviewed the film seem not to have grasped what should have been apparent right from the start, which is that 'Lincoln' is at bottom a play with pictures, not a screenplay.

I like Spike Lee a lot. He's incredibly gifted and I don't think he gets the credit he deserves as a filmmaker.

A director shouldn't get in the way of the movie, the story should.

I didn't know I was doing film noir, I thought they were detective stories with low lighting!

For me, the French new wave is Truffaut and Rohmer. Godard I sometimes have trouble with because he's very much of a director's director. I feel Truffaut is such a humanist, and I always go in that direction.

I don't want to direct a movie as good as Antonioni, or Kubrick, or Polanski, or whoever. I want it to be my own. I think I've got the seed of it and, what's more, that I can make movies that are different and informed by my taste.

What's nice about a lot of Wes Anderson's films is that there's a patience to it. I think that patience brings out a lot more funny things that you would miss otherwise if you just had to make quick cuts and keep the pace, whatever that pace is that bigger budget comedies have to have.

It's such a strange combination that I'd be unhappy to make anything like that without Landis directing.