Film Competition Quotes

I want to remind people that we create films for the MMFF as gifts to them, not to see whose entry is better or which film earned more at the tills.

It's heartbreaking when you hear a kid buying a ticket for... I don't know, whatever movie you're up against. And you see them sneaking into your film. It's just heartbreaking. But in the spirit of full disclosure, that is what I did as an 11-year-old sneaking into 'Stripes.'

What's so great about Sundance is that they only accept such a small handful of films per year for dramatic competition, so you know when you're going to Sundance that you're going to see top-quality projects.

We try to make films for people [that are] the films that we'd like to see. They're not easy to get made. They're hard to get made. You have to keep the budget low to get them made. But at the end of the day, I don't really worry about competition, because I don't really think of it that way. I don't feel like I'm in a race with anybody.

I managed to get a short film with Channel 4 Films. I cast a young actor who'd done a bit of television before, a young actor called Ewan McGregor. That was very first thing. This writer had won this competition, and I made this little short, black and white movie. I think for both Ewan and I it was the start of our careers.

The first time I went to Cannes, Gus Van Sant was there in competition with 'Last Days.'

For some peculiar reason, two films about Oscar Wilde were started at the same time, back in 1959 or 1960. I played Wilde in one, and Robert Morley was in the other. As it turned out, at that particular moment there was no market for any Oscar Wilde movie at all.

There's a film there in competition [of Sundance Film Festival] called To The Bone. It's directed by Marti Noxon. I have a supporting role in it. It got really well received. It's a really great film.

I wrote another wrestling film script. And we finished the shooting [with Lloyd Phillips]. But Henry Winkler came out with his own wrestling film, which did poorly. So the studios passed on ours, and it never got released.

The Oscars are a really strange concept to me, that films and acting can be competing against each other. We're not running the same race. It's like we're all doing different sports in fact.

The energy of first-time directors is tremendous. They work beyond the limits for a hit in this competitive industry.

I remember a few years ago, two of my films - Gulzar Saab's 'Hu tu tu' and Shakeel Noorani's 'Bade Dilwala' - were released simultaneously. 'Bade Dilwala' suffered although it was a good film.

There was a lot of pressure on me when I signed 'Dilwale,' and though it did not do as well in India, overseas the business was crazy despite competition from another film.

I don't think the competition's so rough, within the majority of movies made in Hollywood.

Arguably, the Venice Film Festival is the second best film festival in the world, after Cannes.

When I was making short films for the TV show 'Naalaya Iyakunar,' I wasn't just competing but making films that I could potentially show at international festivals.