Mainstream Cinema Quotes

The movie studios, they only like to make - I make a joke, but it's true - if the movie has the word "man" and a number in the title, they'll make it. If it doesn't have that, it's an R-rated raunchy comedy, and that's it. Any other movie that you're going to make is going to be an independent one. So for filmmakers who want to do something other than "man" and a number, it's either independent films or television, which is like the place for real creative filmmakers to go.

A movie is a movie is a movie. But it has to have an adjective in front of it if it's not a white guy's movie.

Blockbusters run the mainstream industry. We may never again have a decade like the 1970s, when directors were able to find such freedom.

I want to make sensible commercial films.

There's a big difference between the independent film world and the Hollywood film world, and I don't know that I understood that until I got into certain rooms, and people's faces go blank when you talk about Sundance.

It's really hard to find just a simple character-driven drama, outside of a genre, that was available to direct, except for on TV.

I want more sci-fi movies that aren't $200 million movies that I have to wait for and generally be disappointed with.

Indie movies got co-opted by the studio system. The studios insisted that only stars could make movies successful.

I am not someone who believes to doing a film just because it is off beat.

I can't be enticed by a big commercial film.

Yes, you can have art films about the triumph of the human spirit and all of that, but you'll have it done with a big-budget icon with a $20 million salary. You'll have Julia Roberts, you'll have Robert Redford, you'll have Russell Crowe doing those films, because if they're going to cost $90 million, they're going to make that movie for a public that's very large and mainstream. They're not going to make it for three or four million black people.

Even fairly serious moviegoers can't shake this shadow of the corporate world.

I would love to work on a film which would be close to Hollywood standards.

I don't think there has been a huge shift. Most of the films still focus on Salman Khan, Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan, Akshay Kumar, etc. The percentage of films that have someone like a Kangana Ranaut shining in it is really low.

I would rather be attached to well-made, big-budget films.

I want to be commercial. I'm never the person who says, 'I don't care if people don't see my movies.' I always want people to see my movies.

We make movies for the cineplex. They're designed for wide release. They're designed to be seen by a lot of people and eventually make money.

There's certainly enough writers and directors and actors who secretly aspire to make movies and films that agree with the center-right perspective, and I would argue the majority perspective in America.

'Mission: Impossible' is basically entertainment, and for what it is, it's fine. I don't think most actors become actors to do that type of film.

I don't know if you've ever seen some of the Sidney Lumet movies, like Dog Day Afternoon [1975] or Network [1976]. They're real events that happen in real time, and there are all of these different characters experiencing the same thing in different parts of the movie ... I am so bad at explaining my films. But it's in the world of finance and the world of media, and how they connect. It was a big undertaking. A big, mainstream movie, which stars Julia Roberts and George Clooney. But for me, it's really just a small story about character and people.

I wanted to shoot straight, mainstream, somehow off-beat. Not only realistic West, which is quite unfamiliar to the world's population - even to a lot of Americans.

The only difference from one $100 million budget film to another is which of the 12 box stars are getting $20 million to be in it.

What is generally referred to as American-style films are, in fact, studio productions.

I want to do commercial films as well as off-beat movies.

Making independent films is liberating. It eliminates self-censorship, which mainstream films are infected with due to commercial priorities.