Cinematic Vision Quotes

F. Gary Gray, I think, is one of the best directors I've ever worked with in my life, and I'd love to work with him again.

It's not about choosing a specific genre; that's not how I go about deciding what movies to make.

Adapting a novel is not really about being faithful to every word and every moment the author has created. It's more about that same story being filtered through somebody else's sensibility.

With a film, you try to keep your vision in it. I think with 'The American' and 'Control' I managed to do that.

Building upon the world we created with 'Avatar' has been a rare and incredibly rewarding experience. In writing the new films, I've come to realize that 'Avatar's world, story and characters have become even richer than I anticipated, and it became apparent that two films would not be enough to capture everything I wanted to put on screen.

The film industry sees the writer as fungible: The thinking goes, As long as we have Brad Pitt and all this money, we have a great film! No, you need a writer with voice and an engaging story, or what you have is a bomb.

Well, you don't make any demands to Steven Spielberg.

Studios weren't banging on my door to offer me parts... And I thought, well how am I ever going to make movies that speak to my heart and to my values?

Just getting to meet George Lucas was pretty amazing, and then working with him and getting to be part of this process... it's a great responsibility.

Fellini was a little lofty for a teenage boy, but certainly he was a huge influence.

I wanted to be in film. I wanted to be a film student, possibly be a director or cinematographer, not an actor. That was my goal. I didn't believe I had the physical beauty that I'd seen projected and advertised in movies, in theater. It just wasn't for me.

Lars Von Trier is a genius. Every film he makes is so honest and powerful.

When I make a film - I direct my own film, I write my own script - that's what I want to hear from the audience. 'Oh, thank you, Jackie!'

Once I've finished a film I just want to get on and make another one.

When you first start out, you want to be Fellini, or you want to be Bergman.

I think it makes such a huge difference when the director has acting experience as well because it just means that he not only has a view of the film as a whole and the intentions of the scene in terms of the audience, he also has an actor's instinct of how to communicate something to us.

I don’t feel that I’m making movies for iPhones. If someone wants to watch it on an iPhone, I’m not going to stop them, especially if they’re paying for it, but I don’t recommend it. I think it’s dumb, when you have characters that are so small in the frame that they’re not visible. I’m trying to make an epic.

Directors sometimes have good ideas that I wished I'd had, not on rewriting but simply on staging.

My work is better, maybe all filmmakers are better, for Polanski's imprint on cinema. He created language for all of us to use, there is no question about that.

The thing is, as a film director, you're essentially alone: You have to tell a story primarily through pictures, and only you know the film you see in your head.

When I write a screenplay - and I think it's one of the reasons why it was frustrating for me just to be a screenwriter - I'm not thinking of it in terms of words on a page; I'm thinking in terms of visual images - basically, a comic book. I'm thinking of it in a series of shots.

Alejandro Amenábar has a unique way of approaching movies and thinking about something which was new to me. It was different. I have a lot of respect for him so I just took a gamble.

You never know what you do that could be totally out of left field, which actually might work and give something fresh to the whole scene, to the character, whatever. If you have that with a director who then knows how to shape it, either in the direction, in the moment, or in the editing, then that's good.

Definitely, 'True Detective' was a great example of one director, one story. It worked fantastically well. Well, I thought it worked fantastically well; I know a lot people didn't.

I don't have a problem with Werner Herzog.