Movies

Music is still part of my life, but I hate the idea of people coming to see me play the guitar because they've seen me in movies. You want people who are listening to be only interested in the music.

Nobody should come to the movies unless he believes in heroes.

My folks always let me go to the movies every Saturday. We were really motion-picture goers.

I love sports and I love sports movies.

A good film is when the price of the dinner, the theatre admission and the babysitter were worth it.

I always loved silent movies. I was not a specialist, but I loved them. And when I started directing, I became really fascinated by the format - how it works, the device of the silent movie. It's not the same form of expression as a talkie. The lack of sounds makes you participate in the storytelling.

You won't find me in a romantic comedy. Those movies don't speak to me. People don't come to talk to me about those scripts, because they probably think I'm this dark, twisted, miserable person.

I was going to go to a four-year college and be an anthropologist or to an art school and be an illustrator when a friend convinced me to learn photography at the University of Southern California. Little did I know it was a school that taught you how to make movies! It had never occurred to me that I'd ever have any interest in filmmaking.

The movies are the only business where you can go out front and applaud yourself.

Most of us do not consciously look at movies.

In the next couple of years, part of every film's process is going to be to adjust the images. And it'll be to change the color of an actor's tie or change the little smirky thing he's doing with his mouth. Or you can put in more clouds or move the tree a little bit.

I was obsessed with romance. When I was in high school, I saw 'Doctor Zhivago' every day from the day it opened until the day it left the theater.

I think a sequel is a waste of money and time. I think movies should illuminate new stories.

So I like to try to go back and develop pure visual storytelling. Because to me, it's one of the most exciting aspects of making movies and almost a lost art at this point.

A story should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order.

Sometimes in movies, I still have to be the hero, but it's not all that important to me anymore.

Every time I make a picture the critics' estimate of American public taste goes down ten percent.

Always make the audience suffer as much as possible.

I am a cynical optimist. Big opening weekends are like cotton candy. The films you will remember over time are the films that stick in the consciousness of the audience in a good way.

Citizen Kane is perhaps the one American talking picture that seems as fresh now as the day it opened. It may seem even fresher.