Commercial filmmaking Quotes

In America, they shoot budgets and schedules, and they don't shoot films any more. There's more opportunity in Europe to make films that at least have a purity of intent.

In the studio system, things are expected of a film. By the first, second, third act, there's a generic language that comes out of the more commercial system.

The audience loves watching masala films, and I love to make what the audience likes. I also think it is easy to make a masala film.

I'm pretty unfussy when it comes to what a TV show should be, or what a movie should be. A lot of people are trying to maintain the theatrical experience for films. That's not really who we are or what we're about. We come from this fundamental understanding that we're just blessed that someone is giving us any money to make something in this town.

When you make a movie, it's just a huge bureaucracy because movies cost so much money. Millions of people get involved, and pretty soon the creative idea gets tramped on and watered down or filtered through a huge system.

Because many of the films I've made have had an intellectualedge, it's harder for me to lie. It's harder for me to go to peoplewith money and say I don't care about art, all I care about iscommerce; all I really want to do is make money.

I think you do independent movies because you're looking to cut away from commercial movies.

As far as commercials were concerned, I did very few, and I did them only when they gave me carte blanche to them the way that I wanted to. And I did them as an exercise, because I, who do very long films, never thought I would be able to tell a story in 30 or 40 seconds - you come across a whole new system and manner of approaching a subject.

I'd been working on more traditional movie sets and TV shows at Universal. All of a sudden, here we're on location in Animal House, and it's down and dirty and quick. It was the way the new commercial world was shooting; the way the indie world was shooting. These were lighter, faster cameras. It was a generational change.

There is quite an important director in Germany who I think in the early fifties over here, and then went back, and he said something that's absolutely true. And it's more important to repeat that today than it ever was. Not for you, but for us over there it is important. He said, 'In America they make movies like art, and sell it like commodities. We make make movies like commodities and sell them like art.'

I did short film with Damian Lewis from Homeland, that was a really incredible experience. He's one of the best actors I've ever worked with. Even though that's a short film for Jaguar that's really, in essence, a commercial, it didn't feel like it, at all.

They all want you to make a movie for under a million dollars, which I don't want to. I don't want to be a faux radical film-maker at 70. I did that. I don't need to do it again.

I am glad that we can make bold films, different films within the commercial market and still do well.

It's great that we have commercial filmmakers who make family films and understand the aesthetics well, taking this route. They know how to bring the emotions out there without being vulgar. After all, it's a natural instinct.

I'm sure there are people in Hollywood, whose main drive in film is to make money, who will feel that any use of the word hijacking or any reference to anything violent or remotely associated with the terrible tragedy that occurred will lose customers for them. And that will be the only criterion that will matter and so they'll force the minions that work for them to remove these things from their movies, or not make movies about that subject.

I think, in big-budget movies where everything seems so poured over and restricted and the studio wants to examine every frame to make sure it's vetted properly, you lose a little bit of playfulness.

I always loved films, and when I decided to go to film school, it was with the excuse that I would go into making commercials, because that would be a proper profession, and people wouldn't think I was crazy.

I make movies for money, exclusively for money.

Nobody ever starts out to make a mediocre, commercial film. You always think it's going to be something. And then, once you're done with your shooting, you have no control. You're just done, as an actor.

I want to make a film that is commercially successful because that means that the larger cinema-going audience around the world like the movie, which is my goal. That's my job, to make films that people respond to.

When you go to a studio with something you want to make, or they come to you with something they want to make, more often than not, it's a tent pole. Not something one single person is really passionate about on a creative level.

It's something I want to do going forward - make a movie that is commercial and universal and will play in any movie theater or living room in the States or the UK, but is definitively Canadian. I don't think there's such a thing as prohibitively Canadian.

The reason we shot it was that the script was geared to Las Vegas and it was something commercial that we wanted to have in the can in case Butterfly was a success and we needed a follow-up.

If we make films only for the frontbenchers, we can't make money. Hence, we have to make it for a majority audience. As my films are mass films, I deal with emotions in raw form - they are not subtle. I don't mind being branded. That does not mean I like only those kinds of films.

It's obviously a lot more of a political undertaking making a movie in Hollywood and it's a business there. In Australia, they don't expect films to make money; whereas in America they're counting on it.