Filmmaking Quotes

It's very important that what you do is specific to the medium in which you're doing it, and that you utilise what is specific about that medium to do the work. And if you can't think about why it should be done this way, then it doesn't need to be done.

Pain is temporary. Film is forever

I didn’t promise anybody anything. What do I know about Hollywood, anyway? Just a dream I got from sitting through too many double features.

The eye is a camera, and it is not enough.

Cinema is far too rich and capable a medium to be merely left to the storytellers.

Don't be someone who is going to make a film. Be someone who is making a film.

Cinema is a matter of what's in the frame and what's out.

Basically, you make another movie, and another, and hopefully you feel good about every picture you make. And you say, "My name is on that. I did that. It's OK". But don't get me wrong, I still get excited by it all. That, I hope, will never disappear.

The only person who has the right attitude about boxing in the movies for me was Buster Keaton.

I'm assuming most of you work in film and television... your jobs are safe because the vast majority of people cannot make a film to save their lives. And I found that very comforting.

The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.

[On the film industry.] Nobody knows anything.

Editing feels almost like sculpting or a form of continuing the writing process.

A director makes only one movie in his life. Then he breaks it into pieces and makes it again

Art is never finished, only abandoned.

There's nothing quite like the idea of failing spectacularly to excite a film maker

Film is a battleground.

Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.

There's no idiot savant filmmakers.

Film making is an art. Art is fun. Fun is inspiring.