Film Quotes

It would be great to make a movie that had the style of a great '30's film.

To me, watching a movie is like going to an amusement park. My worst fear is making a film that people don't think is a good ride.

I was an insecure kid. Once I saw 'Hercules' with Steve Reeves, it completely changed my life. If I had never gone to that film, I wouldn't be here today.

In film, we sculpt time, we sculpt behaviour and we sculpt light.

I'm an enormous admirer of Christopher Lee. He's somebody, along with Vincent Price, who I celebrate, and I wanted my movies to show that celebration and that honoring of these great film stars that were unafraid to go into horror and Grand Guignol and the macabre.

No, I did a film called 'Death and the Compass' as well.

Yeah, I'd be happy to go back to Mexico or Japan to make another film.

The most serious film can be the most fun. The one that's supposed to be fun can be the most serious.

But for me, really, the written word is always stronger than film.

I always say to anybody who's going over to America for the first time, 'Whatever you do, go and see a popular mainstream film with a big audience.' Because people shout out. You never get that in Britain. Everybody's so quiet, scared to laugh. It's like being in church.

If you've ever seen the film In Which We Serve, but it was about a destroyer in the Mediterranean.

It's a nightmare to sit and watch a film that I'm in. There's a horrible inescapability to it.

On the contrary a film can promote the idea of change without any political message whatsoever but in its form and language can tell people that they can change their lives and contribute to progressive changes in the world.

Film is a very intimate medium.

I use cinematic things in a theatrical way on stage, and in film I use theatrical techniques in a cinematic way.

Robert Altman's 'Nashville' is my all-time favorite film because it covers all the bases - it's original, moving, and has something to say, but also funny and incredibly entertaining.

It's very hard to put forth a film that's about love and the joy of love and for it not to be patronising and not make people nauseous or make them roll their eyes.

The more sincere I could be, the better it would be for the film.

When I'm shooting, really the audience I'm thinking the hardest about is that first test screening audience who I want to like the film and that first opening weekend audience.

I look at the film as an opportunity to see some bountifully creative minds do something that I could not do - tell the story with images. I can't wait to see what they do.

Yes, but Hollywood is the strangest place in that they'll torpedo their own film to prove an emotional point.

I'm never there enough to really keep up with what's going on in the Australian film industry. I just try and be part of it as much as I can.

Television and film acting is really fun because you are working with other people and you are not completely responsible for the outcome of the project.

I had been accepted to film school, but my parents couldn't afford it, and yet they made too much money for me to get a scholarship.

I didn't know I was doing film noir, I thought they were detective stories with low lighting!

I think the wonderful thing about doing theater is that it's more of an actor's medium. I think that film is more of a director's medium. You can't edit something out on stage. It's there.

I don't generally find myself listening to the music of a film unless there's something awfully wrong with it.

But I think the thing I'm proud of about the film is that there aren't many films - either independent films or mainstream Hollywood films - that are like this; it's of its own times, and it's the film Mike Nichols wanted to make.

I mark a script like an exam, and I try not to do anything under 50 per cent. Similarly with the part. And also film is a peculiar thing, parts don't necessarily read in script form anything like as well as they can do when it comes to materialising.

What I've realized is that a film operates both on the intellectual and emotional levels, and if you can find a way to tell a riveting story and draw ideas out of that, it's very powerful.