THE FILMMAKER SAYS
Also available in the Words of Wisdom series:
The Architect Says
The Designer Says
Laura S. Dushkes
Sara Bader
978-1-61689-093-3
978-1-61689-134-3
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Editor: Megan Carey
Designer: Elana Schlenker
Series designer: Paul Wagner
Special thanks to: Meredith Baber, Sara Bader, Nicola Bednarek Brower,
Janet Behning, Carina Cha, Andrea Chlad, Benjamin English, Russell Fernandez,
Will Foster, Jan Haux, Emily Johnston-O’Neill, Diane Levinson, Jennifer Lippert,
Katharine Myers, Lauren Palmer, Margaret Rogalski, Jay Sacher, Dan Simon,
Sara Stemen, Andrew Stepanian, and Joseph Weston of Princeton Architectural Press —Kevin C. Lippert, publisher
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The filmmaker says : quotes, quips, and words of wisdom / compiled and edited by Jamie Thompson Stern. — First edition.
pages cm. — (Words of wisdom)
ISBN 978-1-61689-220-3 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Motion pictures—Quotations, maxims, etc. I. Thompson Stern, Jamie,
1961– editor of compilation.
PN1994.9.F55 2013
791.43’75—dc23
2013014193
compiled and edited by Jamie Thompson Stern
Princeton Architectural Press, New York
PREFACE
* * *
For me, the most exciting part about the movie business is watching dreams become realities. Whether it’s the words on a page, the sketch of a set design, or the storyboard of an action scene, seeing those inchoate thoughts coming magically to life is always magnificent. That process is what the filmmakers in this volume are so passionate about. They want to create, to innovate… and to entertain, delight, horrify, or perplex.
Filmmakers love to talk about making movies almost as much as they love (or, in some cases, claim to hate) making them. The voices in The Filmmaker Says hold forth on such topics as auteur theory, the importance of audience, the creative process, the value of a good story, and the business of show. For all the many movies that have ever been made, there are just as many fervent opinions on what really matters about them. You will see in these pages that filmmakers aren’t a particularly humble or retiring bunch. Jean-Luc Godard announces that “cinema is truth” just as vigorously as Brian De Palma proclaims that “film lies.” The goal of this compendium is to create dialogues—some direct, and some more subtle—between these points of view.
Directors, screenwriters, producers, cinematographers, studio heads, actors, and critics all get to have their say here. The challenge of choosing what quotations to include was pleasurably complicated by the fact that there are so many witty, garrulous geniuses (Quentin Tarantino, I’m looking at you) whose words have been carefully archived in printed and recorded interviews. Believe me, there’s no shortage of material. There is much brilliant commentary out there that didn’t find its way into these pages, and I urge you to continue the search. You’ll probably also be inspired, as I was, to watch—or rewatch—a lot of old movies.
While compiling this volume, I was struck by the parallels between the process of creating and editing a book and the process of making a film. Editing—on paper or in the movies— is a method of manipulating reality by choosing discrete bits of information, then juxtaposing and recombining them to create a new reality. By editing the sequence of the quotes herein as carefully as a sequence of shots in a film, I hope to tie together these disparate thoughts about cinema in a style that relates to film itself.
The seminal French film theorist André Bazin once said that montage (editing) enables cinema to have at its disposal “a whole arsenal of means whereby to impose its interpretation of an event on the spectator.” In editing this “event” in such a way as to show lively conversations among filmmakers from different eras and with wildly varied sensibilities, I certainly want to draw connections, but I encourage you to feel inspired to formulate your own views on what matters about the movies. After all, as novelist and screenwriter William Goldman famously said, “Nobody knows anything.”
Jamie Thompson Stern
THE FILMMAKER SAYS
* * *
No saint, no pope, no general, no sultan has ever had the power that a filmmaker has: the power to talk to hundreds of millions of people for two hours in the dark.
Frank Capra ( 1897– 1991 )
PICK UP A CAMERA. SHOOT SOMETHING. NO MATTER HOW SMALL, NO MATTER HOW CHEESY, NO MATTER WHETHER YOUR FRIENDS AND YOUR SISTER STAR IN IT. PUT YOUR NAME ON IT AS DIRECTOR. NOW YOU’RE A DIRECTOR. EVERYTHING AFTER THAT, YOU’RE JUST NEGOTIATING YOUR BUDGET AND YOUR FEE.
James Cameron ( 1954 – )
IN THE FUTURE, EVERYBODY IS GOING TO BE A DIRECTOR. SOMEBODY’S GOT TO LIVE A REAL LIFE SO WE HAVE SOMETHING TO MAKE A MOVIE ABOUT.
Cameron Crowe ( 1957– )
Get on the floor, start working. Get any job you can, just to get in the door. Once you get in the door, if you’re good, you’ll move up so fast, you won’t know what hit you.
Jerry Bruckheimer ( 1945 – )
THEY DIDN’T OPEN THE DOOR. I HAD TO CUT A HOLE IN THE WINDOW TO GET IN. YOU CLOSE THE DOOR ON ME AND TELL ME I CAN’T, I’M GONNA FIND A WAY TO GET IN.
Tyler Perry ( 1969– )
The first thing you do when you take a piece of paper is always put the date on it, the month, the day, and where it is. Because every idea that you put on paper is useful to you. By putting the date on it as a habit, when you look for what you wrote down in your notes, you will be desperate to know that it happened in April in 1972 and it was in Paris and already it begins to be useful. One of the most important tools that a filmmaker has are his/her notes.
Francis Ford Coppola ( 1939– )
I write down the idea in my notebook, and then I put a little letter in the corner of the page in a circle. S for story, N for novel, M for movie, A for art, P for performance, B for business. This makes me sound totally rigid. I am also lots of fun! Totally wild! Party!
Miranda July ( 1974 – )
I DIDN’T GO TO FILM SCHOOL, SO I’M STILL LEARNING IN PUBLIC.
Jonathan Demme ( 1944 – )
Learning to make films is very easy. Learning what to make films about is very hard.
George Lucas (1944 – )
THE LACK OF FILM CULTURE IS ONE OF THE THINGS THAT REALLY UPSETS ME. THERE’S THIS COMPLETE LACK OF INTEREST IN ANYTHING THAT WAS MADE LONGER THAN TEN YEARS AGO.... IT’S LIKE IGNORING BURIED TREASURE, BUT IT’S NOT EVEN BURIED. IT’S RIGHT THERE.
Peter Bogdanovich ( 1939– )
I think you can study too much. I’ve seen that happen. Young people get immersed in the work of other directors and end up imitating them rather than finding their own identity. It’s important to see the work of as many directors as possible, but you must not become self-conscious. You have to accept that your first attempts are going to be quite rough compared to the finished
works of great masters.
James Ivory ( 1928– )
My first few films were harrowing experiences, because you’re terrified the whole time that you’re going to fuck it up. You don’t know what you’re doing.
David O. Russell ( 1958 – )
I think your first film is always your best. Always. It may not be your most successful or technically accomplished, but you never, ever get close to that feeling of not knowing what you’re doing again. And that feeling of not knowing what you’re doing is an amazing place to be.
Danny Boyle ( 1956– )
I WAS AWARE THAT I DIDN’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT MAKING FILMS, BUT I BELIEVED I COULDN’T MAKE THEM ANY WORSE THAN THE MAJORITY OF FILMS I WAS SEEING. BAD FILMS GAVE ME THE COURAGE TO TRY MAKING A MOVIE.
Stanley Kubrick ( 1928–99 )
I didn’t know what you couldn’t do. I didn’t deliberately set out to invent anything. It just seemed to me, “Why not?”...
That was the gift I brought to Kane ... ignorance.
Orson Welles ( 1915 –85 )
I never really got interested in film per se, until one afternoon when I saw Citizen Kane....It was a revelation to me, as it was to a lot of people. All of a sudden here was this massive, complex, involving story that left the screen with you. It didn’t stay on the screen and lay back there like certain kinds of food that you eat and then five minutes later you’re hungry again. It really stayed with me and I saw it again and again, five or six times. It’s kind of a quarry for filmmakers, like James Joyce’s Ulysses is a quarry for writers.
William Friedkin ( 1935 – )
Sometimes when you’re heavy into the shooting or editing of a picture, you get to the point where you don’t know if you could ever do it again. Then suddenly you get excited by seeing somebody else’s work.
Martin Scorsese ( 1942– )
I’M THE BEST PLAGIARIST IN THE WORLD.
I STEAL FROM THE BEST.
I LIKE TO CALLIT HOMAGE.
Tony Scott (1944 –2012)
Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent.
Jim Jarmusch (1953– )
If you make movies about movies and about characters instead of people, the echoes get thinner and thinner until they’re reduced to mechanical sounds.
John Huston ( 1906–87 )
THE WORLD HAS ALWAYS BEEN FULL OF SHEEP. YOU WANT TO BE A SHEEP, OKAY, THIS IS A DEMOCRACY. BUT IF YOU WANT TO FIND YOUR OWN WAY, THIS IS THE TIME TO DO IT. IT’S NOT HARDER TO BE YOURSELF, IT’S JUST MORE OBVIOUS THAT IT’S HARD. REALLY HARD. IT’S ALWAYS BEEN HARD. IT WAS HARD FOR KEATS.
Jane Campion ( 1954 – )
For the working director, there is no conscious form from film to film. We all know what our ambitions are, but in a very healthy way we are all unconscious of “signature.”
Michael Mann ( 1943– )
PEOPLE ASK YOU ABOUT YOUR SIGNATURE ON THE MOVIE, OR WHATEVER. NOBODY WANTED TO SIGN THE DAMN MOVIE. YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN? WE’RE JUST TRYING TO DO JUSTICE TO THE STORY. WE’RE NOT TRYING TO PEE ON IT.
Ethan Coen ( 1957– )
Success can be a nightmare. When you are identified always with a certain title, with a certain movie, especially with a certain sequence in that movie, it becomes a kind of a little nightmare.
Bernardo Bertolucci ( 1940 – )
IF I MADE CINDERELLA INTO A MOVIE, EVERYONE WOULD LOOK FOR A CORPSE.
Alfred Hitchcock ( 1899–1980 )
In France I’m an auteur, in England I’m a filmmaker, in Germany I make horror films, and in the United States I’m a bum.
John Carpenter ( 1948 – )
I think of horror films as art, as films of confrontation. Films that make you confront aspects of your own life that are difficult to face. Just because you’re making a horror film doesn’t mean you can’t make an artful film.
David Cronenberg ( 1943– )
Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.
Charlie Chaplin ( 1889–1977 )
Tragedy is if I cut my finger. Comedy is if you walk into an open sewer and die.
Mel Brooks ( 1926– )
Eleven Rules for Box Office Appeal:
1. A pretty girl is better than an ugly one.
2. A leg is better than an arm.
3. A bedroom is better than a living room.
4. An arrival is better than a departure.
5. A birth is better than a death.
6. A chase is better than a chat.
7. A dog is better than a landscape.
8. A kitten is better than a dog.
9. A baby is better than a kitten.
10. A kiss is better than a baby.
11. A pratfall is better than anything.
Preston Sturges ( 1898–1959 )
THERE ARE NO RULES IN FILMMAKING, ONLY SINS. AND THE CARDINAL SIN IS DULLNESS.
Frank Capra ( 1897–1991 )
Photography is truth.
The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second.
Jean-Luc Godard* ( 1930 – )
* From Le Petit Soldat (1960)
FILM LIES TWENTY- FOUR TIMES A SECOND.
Brian De Palma ( 1940 – )
Films aren’t real; they’re completely constructed.
All forms of film language are a choice, and none of it is the truth.
Todd Haynes ( 1961– )
As a documentarian, I happily place my faith in reality. It is my caretaker, the provider of subjects, themes, experiences— all endowed with the power of truth and the romance of discovery.
Albert Maysles ( 1926– )
If you ask me what directing is, the first answer that comes into my head is: I don’t know.
Michelangelo Antonioni ( 1912–2007 )
All film directors, whether famous or obscure, regard themselves as misunderstood or underrated. Because of that, they all lie. They’re obliged to overstate their own importance.
François Truffaut ( 1932–84 )
The key word in art— it’s an ugly word, but it’s a necessary word—is power, your own power. Power to say, “I’m going to bend you to my will.” However you disguise it, you’re gripping someone’s throat. You’re saying, “My dear, this is the way it’s going to be.”
Elia Kazan ( 1909–2003 )
I PROBABLY AM A LAZY ARTIST AND PROBABLY DON’T CONTROL THINGS AS MUCH AS SOME PEOPLE WOULD LIKE— BUT THAT’S MY BUSINESS. AND IF MY STYLE IS TOO LOOSE OR IMPROVISED FOR SOME PEOPLE’S TASTE, THAT’S THEIR PROBLEM—TOTALLY.
Robert Altman ( 1925 –2006 )
I TEND TO PUT DOWN THE AUTEUR THEORY BECAUSE A LOT OF PEOPLE EMBRACED IT AS A ONE-MAN/ONE-CONCEPT KIND OF THING, AND MAKING A MOVIE IS AN ENSEMBLE.
Clint Eastwood ( 1930 – )
THE BEST FILMS ARE BEST BECAUSE OF NOBODY BUT THE DIRECTOR.
Roman Polanski ( 1933– )
If you have a strong vision, then you’re able to throw it away for a better one.
Julie Taymor ( 1952– )
I don’t get attached to anything. I’m like a good antique dealer. I’m prepared to sell my most valuable table.
Ridley Scott ( 1937– )
I LOVE MAKING MOVIES. IF I WASN’T PAID TO DO IT, I WOULD PAY TO DO IT.
David Lean ( 1908–91 )
I DISLIKE DIRECTING. I HATE THE CONSTANT DEALING WITH VOLATILE PERSONALITIES. DIRECTING IS EMOTIONAL FRUSTRATION, ANGER, AND TREMENDOUSLY HARD WORK—SEVEN DAYS A WEEK, TWELVE TO SIXTEEN HOURS A DAY.
George Lucas ( 1944 – )
I keep the environment pretty relaxed—relaxed but focused. I work with the same people all the time. There’s a form of band humor that develops: inside jokes and references that only a core group of people understand. It’s
fun. Some people believe tension is a good creative tool, that you get more out of people if you make them feel insecure. I’m not one of those people, and I don’t want to be around that when I go to work.
Steven Soderbergh ( 1963– )
The fact is that nothing good ever came out of a happy set. You can’t stay sharp without friction— that’s just physics.
David Fincher ( 1962– )
I’m used to people not expecting much from me. But then as soon as I start working, that drops away. I don’t yell. I’m petite. I don’t turn into a tyrant. Being underestimated is, in a way, a kind of advantage, because people are usually pleasantly surprised by the result.
Sofia Coppola ( 1971– )
I DON’T GET ULCERS. I CAUSE THEM.
The Filmmaker Says Page 1