The Filmmaker Says
Page 3
Jean Renoir ( 1894 –1979 )
The Hays Office insisted that we couldn’t show or glamorize a prostitute— that’s impossible....
You know how we overcame it? We had to prominently show a sewing machine in her apartment: thus she was not a whore, she was a “seamstress!”
Fritz Lang ( 1890 –1976 )
NOTHING THAT IS EXPRESSED
IS OBSCENE. WHAT IS OBSCENE IS WHAT IS HIDDEN.
Nagisa Oshima ( 1932–2013 )
I don’t want to be made pacified or made comfortable.
I like stuff that gets your adrenaline going.
Kathryn Bigelow ( 1951– )
Quite simply, a movie has to grab me in the place that makes my voice go high and then I’ll really commit to it.
Steven Spielberg ( 1946– )
People who look at these action movies and complain that the plots make no sense are completely missing the point, because they don’t have to make sense. They’re not made for people who care about plots, they’re made as an alternative to video games.
Nora Ephron ( 1941–2012 )
I LOVE COMEDIES, MUSICALS, AND THRILLERS LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE, BUT I CONFESS TO BELIEVING ACTION PICTURES ARE WHAT MOVIES ARE MOST ESSENTIALLY ALL ABOUT.
Walter Hill ( 1942– )
Most films reflect the world, and the world is violent and in a lot of trouble. It’s not the other way around. The films don’t make a peaceful world violent—the violent world made the films.
David Lynch ( 1946– )
I DON’T FEEL THE NEED TO JUSTIFY THE VIOLENCE.
IT’S WHAT EDISON INVENTED THE CAMERA FOR. IT’S SUCH A CINEMATIC THING. LITERATURE CAN’T QUITE DO IT. THEATER CAN’T QUITE DO IT. PAINTING CAN’T QUITE DO IT. CINEMA CAN DO IT. SURE, MY FILMS ARE FUCKING INTENSE. BUT IT’S A TARANTINO MOVIE. YOU DON’T GO TO A METALLICA CONCERT AND ASK THE FUCKERS TO TURN THE MUSIC DOWN.
Quentin Tarantino ( 1963– )
This is not the age of manners. This is the age of kicking people in the crotch and telling them something and getting a reaction. I want to shock people into awareness.
I don’t believe there’s any virtue in understatement.
Kenneth Russell ( 1927–2011 )
What you have is an audience that is desensitized. You have to give them something bigger and better— spend more money and have something more lavish— to even get their attention. So, in a way, it’s kind of like you’re a drug dealer, and you’ve got somebody whose habit is going up and up, and they need a finer and finer grade of dope.
You can’t go back and give them aspirin anymore.
John Sayles ( 1950 – )
WHEN YOU USE VIOLENCE FOR ENTERTAINMENT, YOU’RE GETTING PRETTY LOW ON THE HUMAN SCALE.
Norman Jewison ( 1926– )
The point is that the violence in us, in all of us, has to be expressed constructively or it will sink us.
Sam Peckinpah ( 1925 –84 )
I like period pictures because when you do a period picture, if you do it right, it’s sort of like a pre-shrunken shirt. It won’t date, because it’s already dated. It’s kind of pre-dated, because you capture a moment in time.
Peter Bogdanovich ( 1939– )
IT’S JUST A DAMN GOOD HOT TALE, SO DON’T GET A LOT OF THEES, THOUS, AND THUMS IN YOUR MIND.
Cecil B. DeMille ( 1881–1959 )
[THE STUDIO] FINALLY UNDERSTOOD THAT BLACK AND WHITE IS NOT JUST AN ARTISTIC CHOICE, IT’S AN EMOTIONAL ONE AS WELL. THE EMOTION IS STRONGER IN BLACK AND WHITE.
Tim Burton ( 1958 – )
Color can do anything that black and white can.
Vincente Minnelli ( 1903–86 )
DIGITAL, NO MATTER WHAT PEOPLE TELL YOU, IT’S BULLSHIT. THEY SAY, “OH, IT LOOKS JUST LIKE FILM.” IT DOESN’T LOOK LIKE FILM AND NEVER WILL.
Michael Bay ( 1965 – )
The cinema began with a passionate, physical relationship between celluloid and the artists and craftsmen and technicians who handled it, manipulated it, and came to know it the way a lover comes to know every inch of the body of the beloved. No matter where the cinema goes, we cannot afford to lose sight of its beginnings.
Martin Scorsese ( 1942– )
That celluloid, the actual film that runs through the camera, is dead. That’s gone, and now digital is here. But storytelling with cinema never will die— ever, ever, ever. The way the stories are told may change, but it will always be.
David Lynch ( 1946– )
My favorite and preferred step between imagination and image is a strip of photochemistry that can be held, twisted, folded, looked at with the naked eye, or projected onto a surface for others to see. It has a scent, and it is imperfect. If you get too close to the moving image, it’s like Impressionist art. And if you stand back, it can be utterly photorealistic. You can watch the grain, which I like to think of as the visible, erratic molecules of a new creative language. . . . Today, its years are numbered, but I will remain loyal to this analog art form until the last lab closes.
Steven Spielberg ( 1946– )
WE ARE PAINTING WITH LIGHT.
Rouben Mamoulian ( 1897–1987 )
A cinematographer has to know more than just painting with light. He has to think about the movement, he has to think about what comes together when he shoots a sequence, that he knows which frames will meet. What’s the rhythm of a scene, and how can he tell the story in the most visual way, the most dramatic way, to photograph a scene. And that is much more than painting with light.
Michael Ballhaus ( 1935 – )
I DON’T DIRECT A FILM, I SET UP AN ATMOSPHERE AND THE ATMOSPHERE DIRECTS THE FILM.
John Cassavetes ( 1929–89 )
My directors of photography light my films, but the colors of the sets, furnishings, clothes, hairstyles— that’s me. Everything that’s in front of the camera, I bring you. I work through intuition, like a painter with a canvas, building it up.
Pedro Almodóvar ( 1949– )
WHEN YOU’RE MAKING AN ANIMATED FILM... YOU HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO BUILD EVERYTHING. IF YOU WANT A PENCIL IN THE SCENE, OR A CUP OF COFFEE, OR IF YOU WANT A TREE OR GRASS, YOU HAVE TO MAKE IT, AND SOMEBODY’S GOING TO CHOOSE HOW IT’S MADE. AND SO YOU HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO DESIGN EVERYTHING, YOU KNOW, INCLUDING THE CLOUDS.
Wes Anderson ( 1969– )
IT’S JUST ATTENTION TO DETAIL. IT’S STITCH AFTER STITCH AFTER STITCH. THERE’S NO SHORTCUT.
Tony Gilroy ( 1956 – )
Having made one film, I decided that it was the best and most beautiful form that I knew and one that I wanted to continue with. I was in love with it, as you say, really tremendously so.
Orson Welles ( 1915 –85 )
It’s art.
It’s commerce. It’s heartbreaking and it’s fun.
It’s a great way to live.
Sidney Lumet ( 1924 –2011 )
I am the son of filmmakers. I was born with this bow tie made of celluloid on my collar.
Sergio Leone ( 1929–89 )
INDEX
* * *
Allen, Woody 87, 120
Almodóvar, Pedro 149
Altman, Robert 45, 102
Anderson, Paul Thomas 86
Anderson, Wes 150
Antonioni, Michelangelo 42, 81
Ballhaus, Michael 147
Bay, Michael 142
Beatty, Warren 61, 88, 117
Bergman, Ingmar 77, 84
Bertolucci, Bernardo 30
Bigelow, Kathryn 128
Bogdanovich, Peter 16, 62, 138
Boorman, John 74
Boyle, Danny 19
Branagh, Kenneth 59
Bresson, Robert 72
Brooks, Mel 35
Bruckheimer, Jerry 10, 92
Buñuel, Luis 103
Burton, Tim 140
Cameron, James 8, 98
Campion, Jane 27
Capra, Frank 7, 37
Carpenter, John 32
Cassavetes, John 148
Chaplin, Charlie 34
Cody, Diablo 108
Coen, Ethan 29
Coolidge, Martha 57
Coppola, Francis Ford 12, 79
Coppola, Sofia 54
Cronenberg, David 33
Crowe, Cameron 9
Cukor, George 66, 105
De Palma, Brian 39
DeMille, Cecil B. 139
Demme, Jonathan 14
Disney, Walt 99
Eastwood, Clint 46
Ebert, Roger 160
Ephron, Nora 130
Evans, Robert 115
Fellini, Federico 89
Fincher, David 53, 90
Ford, John 67, 83
Friedkin, William 22
Gilroy, Tony 151
Godard, Jean-Luc 38, 123
Goldman, William 63
Granik, Debra 118
Hawks, Howard 65
Haynes, Todd 40
Heckerling, Amy 76
Herzog, Werner 75
Hill, Walter 131
Hitchcock, Alfred 31, 58, 71
Howard, Ron 106
Huston, John 26
Ivory, James 17
Jackson, Peter 80
Jarmusch, Jim 25
Jewison, Norman 136
July, Miranda 13
Kael, Pauline 109
Kazan, Elia 44
Kramer, Stanley 96
Kubrick, Stanley 20
Kurosawa, Akira 95
Lang, Fritz 126
Lean, David 50
Lee, Ang 119
Lee, Spike 100
Lehman, Ernest 64
Leigh, Mike 110
Leone, Sergio 154
Lucas, George 15, 51
Lumet, Sidney 82, 153
Lynch, David 132, 144
Mamet, David 114
Mamoulian, Rouben 146
Mann, Michael 28
Maysles, Albert 41
Mendes, Sam 112
Minnelli, Vincente 141
Moore, Michael 97
Motion Picture Production Code of 1930 (Hays Code) 124
Nolan, Christopher 111
Oshima, Nagisa 127
Peckinpah, Sam 137
Penn, Sean 60
Perry, Tyler 11
Polanski, Roman 47, 121
Preminger, Otto 55
Ray, Satyajit 69
Renoir, Jean 125
Russell, David O. 18
Russell, Kenneth 134
Sayles, John 135
Schlesinger, John 85
Scorsese, Martin 23, 143
Scott, Ridley 49
Scott, Tony 24
Soderbergh, Steven 52, 113
Spielberg, Steven 129, 145
Stevens, George 73
Stone, Oliver 93
Sturges, Preston 36
Tarantino, Quentin 78, 133
Taymor, Julie 48
Truffaut, François 43
Vinterberg, Thomas 101
von Trier, Lars 101
Wachowski, Lana 116
Waters, John 107
Welles, Orson 21, 70, 152
Wilder, Billy 56, 94
Wise, Robert 68
Zinnemann, Fred 122
Zukor, Adolph 104
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
* * *
I want to thank Megan Carey of Princeton Architectural Press for the singular and exciting opportunity to combine my past life in the film industry with my present career of writing and book editing. Megan—editrix extraordinaire—and I share a long history. She taught me so much the first time we worked together, and I am grateful for the opportunity to learn from her again. She works exceptionally hard, but never forgets that patience and laughter (and, of course, attention to detail!) are key to the process.
Sara Bader, Russell Fernandez, and Elana Schlenker of Princeton Architectural Press were essential to the final product. They not only have the taste and discernment of true artists, but also paid attention to the minutiae of the entire concept without sacrificing content or design. What skill and balance they possess!
Thanks also to my professional mentors at Knock Knock from whom I have learned immeasurably, especially Jen Bilik, Craig Hetzer, and Erin Conley. And to Katie Arnoldi—you’ve always been my biggest supporter and best friend. Finally, I’d like to thank my family: my parents, Joseph and Jeri Butler, for a lifetime of encouragement; my children, Mel, Thomas, and Maddie, who inspire me (Maddie gets my special gratitude for leading me to Bookman’s Alley, that labyrinthine used-book paradise in Evanston, Illinois, where I found the Bazin book that solved all my problems); and Gardner, always my unfailing champion.
Because we are human, because we are bound by gravity and the limitations of our bodies, because we live in a world where the news is often bad and the prospects disturbing, there is a need for another world somewhere, a world where Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers live.
Roger Ebert ( 1942–2013 )