Quotes

There are three lovely critical expressions: pretentious, gratuitous, profound. None of which I truly understand.

I can't think how anyone can become a director without learning the craft of cinematography. I was very glad later when I was directing that I wasn't in the hands of a cinematographer and hoping that he would do it well. I would know what he was doing, and we could discuss how that scene would look. It was just lucky in a way that I didn't go to film school and just learned all this on the floor.

I shoot a lot of stuff. I think that's probably come from not having gone to film school. Things work themselves out. You've lost the showmanship thing, the fairground barker, come-see-what's-inside aspect of filmmaking when you try to plan everything for the audience.

In life, we all learn from everyone. But if you like and admire someone tremendously, perhaps because they think the way you do, or like the way you think, then inevitably you do.

It fascinates me now that film has become a university subject; I can't believe it.

It rather shattered me today when I went to see Eric Fellner's talk - it was fascinating, and he's probably one of the most successful producers right now in England. He talked about how his films are ordered and structured and market researched. In my day - and I was lucky that way - it was still a showman's place, a walk-right-up kind of thing. There was something vagabond-like about it, at the same time it was growing secretly. And the idea of photography as an art was ridiculous. But that was my life, in a factory setting.

Movies are not scripts - movies are films; they're not books, they're not the theater. It's a completely different discipline, it exists on its own. I would say that the beauty of it is it's not the theater, it's not done over again. It's done in bits and pieces. Things are happening which you can't get again.

People usually arrive to see something with an open mind. I want to make them feel something emotionally, but not by planning how to get them there. That would almost be like the communist days when newspapers told people what to think - when there was no competition with Pravda.

Some people are very lucky, and have the story in their heads. I've never storyboarded anything. I like the idea of chance. What makes God laugh is people who make plans.

The great difference between screen acting and theater acting is that screen acting is about reacting - 75% of the time, great screen actors are great reactors. When it comes to film, the director tells the audience what to look at. That doesn't happen on stage. When the dialog stops, people don't know where to look.

You make the movie through the cinematography - it sounds quite a simple idea, but it was like a huge revelation to me. Curiously, it sank for a while when video and commercials came in. Because they had very little story to tell and they just had one thing to sell, they could have magnificent photography but not great cinematography. So quite a lot of people who've come into cinema from the commercials world have had to learn the very fact of what cinematography is over again.

[on whether he watches his own movies] I never watch them. It's like a trip to the past. You can't help but remember the day each scene was shot. It may be a shot to you, but it's a day to me.

God laughs at people who make plans. If one does too much planning, you're not seeing the gold beneath your feet.

[on Stanley Kubrick] I must say I did like his attitude towards film and the fact that he was an artist and complete unto himself. He wasn't under corporate censorship, and he was never trying to make a film that you'd be able to pigeonhole in any particular genre. I think that was the case with all his films.

I've been told my movies are difficult to market. It isn't a horror film, it isn't a thriller. Yes, there's a love story in it but it could hardly be called a romance. People love things in boxes, classified a genre. But it's just life. Life and birth and sex and love - they don't necessarily all go together.

I don't look back on any film I've done with fondness or pride. I look back on my films and on the past generally ... I can only used the phrase, "Well, I'm damned."