Noir Style Quotes

I love Elmore Leonard. To me, True Romance is basically like an Elmore Leonard movie.

We went all dark and grimy for 'Riverdale.'

'Never Die Alone' is primarily a riveting genre film that neatly exhibits the director's growing assurance - Donald Goines would be proud.

I always loved when James Stewart did roles that were not so dialogue-based, like 'Vertigo.'

Raymond Chandler once wrote that Dashiell Hammett gave murder back to the people who really committed it.

So I grew up watching film noir, you know the classic stuff. William Holden, Richard Widmark, Robert Mitchum, all those.

With 'The Big Lebowski,' we were really consciously thinking about doing a Raymond Chandler story, as much as it's about L.A.

I've always liked police-blotter kind of writing, or the writing of a policeman, right to the point and hardboiled. That's how I see at least the prose elements of scriptwriting.

I've been a fan of noir films since I was in high school.

Old film-noir movies. There's something comforting about watching black-and-white movies, and hearing this kind of music just puts me in a fantasy world. It's a really great escape for me.

I wrote my graduate thesis at New York University on hard-boiled fiction from the 1930s and 1940s, so, for about two years, I read nothing but Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, James Cain and Chester Himes. I developed such a love for this kind of writing.

I've been tremendously moved by a bunch of odd books. Ross McDonald is very important to me. I love the Lew Archer books.

As a filmmaker, I tilt towards stories which are crime-led.

I do love a dark movie.

George V. Higgins's 'The Friends of Eddie Coyle' (1970) added an extra literary layer to the con novel; James Crumley's 'The Last Good Kiss' (1978) influenced countless writers and will be remembered forever for its opening line, quoted often in obituaries of the author.

The most telling thing about 'Fargo,' both the now-classic movie and the television series, is that it doesn't take place in Fargo.

Hardboiled crime fiction came of age in 'Black Mask' magazine during the Twenties and Thirties. Writers like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler learnt their craft and developed a distinct literary style and attitude toward the modern world.

I like to think I'm writing in the tradition of Raymond Chandler, although I don't ape his style.

That was certainly true the first time, when I did Body Heat, the first movie that I directed. I was looking for a vessel to tell a certain kind of story, and I was a huge fan of Film Noir, and what I liked about it was that it was so extreme in style.

I ought to be more hardboiled; I'd like to be. I don't think I have it in me. To write in clipped sentences. To employ gritty metaphor in the introduction of sultry blondes... I can't do it, so why bother trying?

That's the great thing about the 'Sin City' movies. Each little slot is incredibly meaningful, and each character has their own moment.

'Heavy Rain' was really close to a dark thriller, like 'Se7en.' 'Beyond' is different in terms of tone.

With a genre like film noir, everyone has these assumptions and expectations. And once all of those things are in place, that's when you can really start to twist it about and mess around with it.

I love the French detective series 'Spiral.' It's quite brutal to watch, but I'm already hooked.

I was well under the spell of the old Gold Medal Crime novels when I wrote 'Savage Season,' and I wanted to write a modern version of that. I had tried the same thing with 'Cold in July,' and I wanted to give it another go.