Quotes about film
page 2

“The next thing I know, I'm on the set of the movie Magic Mike. The movie is directed by a director named Steven Soderbergh, who's an amazing, amazing director, he's done a lot of great films. And, of course, Channing Tatum's in the movie. In addition, there's an actor by the name of Matthew McConaughey, who's attached to the movie. [Several audience members cheer] I'm a huge fan of Matthew McConaughey, okay? When I found out that I was gonna work with him, I was so excited, you know? People ask me, "Really, you get star-struck?" Hell yeah! I'm a comedian, not an actor. So, I show up, and, immediately, they send me to the makeup trailer that's outside. So, I go into the makeup trailer, I sit down, they start working on my hair, they start putting makeup on me, and in comes Matthew McConaughey, and he sits down on the chair right next to me. And I start freaking out, "Oh, my God, that's Matthew McConaughey!" [Stutters excitedly] And, now, I decide to introduce myself before I did or said something stupid, right? So, I look over to him, and I say, "Excuse me, Mr. McConaughey? How are you doing? My name's Gabriel Iglesias, I'm going to be playing the role of Tobias, the club DJ, and I just wanted to say Hello, and that it's an honor to work with you." And, in my head, I'm thinking, "I hope he's the same guy. I hope he's the same person in the movies, I hope his voice is the same, I hope his accent's the same." And he turns to me, and he says, [Imitating Matthew McConaughey] "All riiight." [Audience cheers] "How you doin' there, big man? You doin' good?" "I'm doing good." "All riiight."”

Gabriel Iglesias (1976) American actor

And, I'm spazzing out. [Gives excited gibberish]
Aloha, Fluffy (2013)

God, People, Stupidity, Hope

“No critic writing about a film could say more than the film itself, although they do their best to make us think the opposite.”

Federico Fellini (1920–1993) Italian filmmaker

"Film Critics"
I'm a Born Liar (2003)

Thinking

“I remember the casting session that I had where I was a break dancer, having this punk hair cut. They rejected me and I became really disillusioned with the business and said well this is what it's all about, and I haven't even got in to read a line. He said don't worry, some day we're going to get you back into this and it's going to happen for you, which I kind of took to heart. It was one of those situations where I was lucky and fortunate enough to be at the right places at the right time. All of a sudden I was on the set of Growing Pains and got this audition for This Boy's Life and was able to jump into the feature film world. It's really been just simply the fact that I'd been able to work, you know what I mean? I would probably still be trying to be an actor even if I was out of work, but I would probably become a little disillusioned at some point and move on to other things. But it's the one thing that I know that I love.”

Leonardo DiCaprio (1974) American actor and film producer

http://www.popmonk.com/actors/leonardo-dicaprio/quotes-leonardo-dicaprio.htm

Love, Life, Pain, World

“It's not just women in film, 18-year-old girls feel pressure to do preventative injecting. I see someone's face, someone's body who'd had children and I think they're the song lines of your experience, and why would you want to eradicate that? I look at people sort of entombing themselves and all you see is little pin holes of terror… and you think, just live your life, death is not going to be any easier just because your face can't move.”

Cate Blanchett (1969) Australian actress

Motherhood, Hollywood and Cate, The Age, 9 May 2005 http://www.theage.com.au/news/TV--Radio/Cate-on-Denton/2005/05/09/1115584884935.html,

Life, Death, Women, Children

“On The Beach is a story about the end of the world, and Melbourne sure is the right place to film it.”

Ava Gardner (1922–1990) American actress

In 1959 during the filming of On the Beach.
This has become a standing joke about Melbourne, but it's almost certainly either apocryphal or a misquotation.
Misattributed

World

“Working to timings and synchronising your musical thoughts with the film can be stimulating rather than restrictive. Scoring is a limitation but like any limitation is can be made to work for you. Verdi, except for a handful of pieces, worked best when he was 'turned on' by a libretto. The most difficult problem in music is form, and in a film you already have this problem solved for you. You are presented with a basic structure, a blueprint, and provided the film has been well put together, well edited, it often suggests its own rhythms and tempo. The quality of the music is strictly up to the composer. Many people seem to assume that because film music serves the visual it must be something of secondary value. Well, the function of any art is to serve a purpose in society. For many years, music and painting served religion. The thing to bear in mind is that film is the youngest of the arts, and that scoring is the youngest of the music arts. We have a great deal of development ahead of us.”

Jerry Goldsmith (1929–2004) film composer

ibid., p. 209

People, Religion, Art, Music

“Nic Roeg inspires me. He’s one of the greatest British film directors. His work is bold, challenging, cinematic and full of mesmerising ideas.”

Olly Blackburn Film director and screenwriter

Olly Blackburn meets Nic Roeg, TimeOut London, Olly Blackburn, Time Out Group Ltd and Time Out Digital Ltd., 9 July 2008, 23 February 2012 http://www.timeout.com/film/features/show-feature/5148/olly-blackburn-meets-nic-roeg.html,

Idea

“When I made my first film, I think the thing was probably helped me the most was that it was such an unusual thing to do in the early 50s for someone who actually go and make a film. People thought it was impossible. It really is terribly easy. All anybody needs is a camera, a tape recorder, and some imagination.”

Stanley Kubrick (1928–1999) American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and editor

Interviewed by Charles Kohler, East Village Eye (1968)

People, Imagination, Thinking, Help

“A good opening and a good ending make for a good film provided they come close together.”

Federico Fellini (1920–1993) Italian filmmaker

"Recipe for a Good Film"
I'm a Born Liar (2003)

“One of the troubles about vanity is that it grows with what it feeds on. The more you are talked about, the more you will wish to be talked about. The condemned murderer who is allowed to see the account of his trial in the press is indignant if he finds a newspaper which has reported it inadequately. And the more he finds about himself in other newspapers, the more indignant he will be with the one whose reports are meagre. Politicians and literary men are in the same case… It is scarcely possible to exaggerate the influence of vanity throughout the range of human life, from the child of three to the potentate at whose frown the world trembles. Mankind have even committed the impiety of attributing similar desires to the Deity, whom they imagine avid for continual praise.
But great as is the influence of the motives we have been considering, there is one which outweighs them all. I mean the love of power. Love of power is closely akin to vanity, but it is not by any means the same thing. What vanity needs for its satisfaction is glory, and it is easy to have glory without power. The people who enjoy the greatest glory in the United States are film stars, but they can be put in their place by the Committee for Un-American Activities, which enjoys no glory whatever.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1950s, What Desires Are Politically Important? (1950)

Love, Life, Men, People

“Can we be honest for a moment. You didn't have a good Christmas, did you? Your turkey was too dry, your kids spent all day glued to their internets, and you didn't bother watching the Big Christmas Film because you've owned it for years on DVD. What you should have had to liven things up was my mother. She arrived at my house with a steely resolve that the Christmas holidays would be exactly like the Christmas holidays she enjoyed when she was a child. Only without the diphtheria or the bombing raids.”

Jeremy Clarkson (1960) English broadcaster, journalist and writer

Source: For Crying Out Loud! The World According to Clarkson Volume Three (2008), p. 1

Holiday, Christmas, Housing

“Once or twice I have tried to talk to film people about my ugly heroine.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

Writing (1990).
Context: Once or twice I have tried to talk to film people about my ugly heroine. I explain to them the extraordinary psychological fascination of the medieval legend of the Loathly Damsel, whose splendour of spirit is confined within a hideous body, and she becomes beautiful only when she is understood and loved. I advise you not to talk to resolutely Hollywood minds about the Loathly Damsel. Their eyes glaze, and their cigars go out, and behind the lenses of their horn-rimmed spectacles I see the dominating symbol of their inner life: it is a dollar sign.

People

“The film industry is a great industry with infinite possibilities for good and bad. Its primary purpose is to entertain people. On the side, it can do many other things. It can popularize certain ideals, it can make education palatable. But in the long run, the judge who decides whether what it does is good or bad is the man or woman who attends the movies.”

Eleanor Roosevelt My Day

My Day (1935–1962)
Context: The film industry is a great industry with infinite possibilities for good and bad. Its primary purpose is to entertain people. On the side, it can do many other things. It can popularize certain ideals, it can make education palatable. But in the long run, the judge who decides whether what it does is good or bad is the man or woman who attends the movies. In a democratic country I do not think the public will tolerate a removal of its right to decide what it thinks of the ideas and performances of those who make the movie industry work. (29 October 1947)

People, Education

“Where men are forbidden to honor a king they honor millionaires, athletes, or film-stars instead — even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served — deny it food and it will gobble poison.”

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist

Equality (1943)
Context: We Britons should rejoice that we have contrived to reach much legal democracy (we still need more of the economic) without losing our ceremonial Monarchy. For there, right in the midst of our lives, is that which satisfies the craving for inequality, and acts as a permanent reminder that medicine is not food. Hence a man's reaction to Monarchy is a kind of test. Monarchy can easily be "debunked", but watch the faces, mark well the accents of the debunkers. These are the men whose taproot in Eden has been cut — whom no rumor of the polyphony, the dance, can reach – men to whom pebbles laid in a row are more beautiful than an arch. Yet even if they desire mere equality they cannot reach it. Where men are forbidden to honor a king they honor millionaires, athletes, or film-stars instead — even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served — deny it food and it will gobble poison.

Men, Food, Star, Nature

“When I’m writing music for a film, inspiration will come from the subject matter and visual images, because I don’t agree to any offers of film work unless I believe I can add another dimension to the film. But if l’m writing music purely for myself, inspiration comes naturally, from everything around”

Vangelis (1943) Greek composer of electronic, progressive, ambient, jazz, pop rock, and orchestral music

1984
Context: On inspiration: "Of course, inspiration can come in different ways, depending on what field you’re working in? When I’m writing music for a film, inspiration will come from the subject matter and visual images, because I don’t agree to any offers of film work unless I believe I can add another dimension to the film. But if l’m writing music purely for myself, inspiration comes naturally, from everything around. I absorb every experience in life, every situation, because anything can become a source of inspiration — positive or negative. In general l’m influenced more by everyday concepts — nature, the city and so forth — than by hearing other pieces of music. Neither do I find any special inspiration from working in a studio. Obviously it makes life a lot easier to have 24 tracks to record on, and I use the studio as a tool to help in the writing process. I see the mixing desk really as another instrument, the conductor for all the others. But although the tape recorder and the console are just as important as the keyboards, I haven’t equipped my studio with a lot of hi-tech effects: l’d rather spend time searching through my sound library to get the exact colour I want".

Music, Nature

“Even young directors — for most of them, their only standard of achievement is how well their films do on the first weekend or whatever. It worries me.”

Roman Polanski (1933) Polish-French film director, producer, writer, actor, and rapist

"Roman Polanski: An Exclusive Interview" by Taylor Montague http://web.archive.org/web/20041121095701/http://www.geocities.com/mishaca/interviews/polanski.html Context: It's already getting more and more difficult to make an ambitious and original film. There are less and less independent producers or independent companies and an increasing number of corporations who are more interested in balance sheets than in artistic achievement. They want to make a killing each time they produce a film. They're only interested in the lowest common denominator because they're trying to reach the widest audience. And you got some kind of entropy. That's the danger; they look more alike, those films. The style is all melting and it all looks the same. Even young directors — for most of them, their only standard of achievement is how well their films do on the first weekend or whatever. It worries me. But then, from time to time, you have a film like The Usual Suspects or.... I'm trying to think of something American with some kind of originality... Pulp Fiction.

“I am full of doubts … Each new film is like a trial. Before I step in front of the camera, I do not know whether I am going to fall or whether I am going to fly — and that is exactly the way I want it to stay.”

Juliette Binoche (1964) French actress

As quoted in "How did I survive my childhood?" in The Telegraph (16 December 2005)

Way, Flying

“Everything of mine which has been filmed so far has been one character short, and that character is me.”

Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) American writer

"Preface"
Between Time and Timbuktu (1972)
Context: I have become an enthusiast for the printed word again. I have to be that, I now understand, because I want to be a character in all of my works. I can do that in print. In a movie, somehow, the author always vanishes. Everything of mine which has been filmed so far has been one character short, and that character is me.

“When film is not a document, it is dream.”

Ingmar Bergman (1918–2007) Swedish filmmaker

On Andrei Tarkovsky in Laterna Magica (1987); The Magic Lantern : An Autobiography as translated by Joan Tate (1988).  [also sometimes referred to as The Magical Lantern]
Context: When film is not a document, it is dream. That is why Tarkovsky is the greatest of them all. He moves with such naturalness in the room of dreams. He doesn't explain. What should he explain anyhow? He is a spectator, capable of staging his visions in the most unwieldy but, in a way, the most willing of media. All my life I have hammered on the doors of the rooms in which he moves so naturally. Only a few times have I managed to creep inside. Most of my conscious efforts have ended in embarrassing failure...

Dreams

“None of the films is about me. Not a single one. None. I have my life and I'll simply never tell anyone what part of me is in my films.”

Krzysztof Kieślowski (1941–1996) Polish film director and screenwriter

As quoted in "Kieślowski's Many Colours" by Patrick Abrahamsson, in Oxford University Student newspaper (2 June 1995)
Context: I don't make biographical films … None of the films is about me. Not a single one. None. I have my life and I'll simply never tell anyone what part of me is in my films. I won't ever tell anyone about that, because I don't consider that to be anyone else's business but mine. Nobody will guess where and how and in what way I fill them with my own pains. And that's an intimate aspect of my work that I keep to myself. … I won't even tell my wife — ever.

Life, Parting

“When we experience a film, we consciously prime ourselves for illusion. Putting aside will and intellect, we make way for it in our imagination.”

Ingmar Bergman (1918–2007) Swedish filmmaker

"Introduction" of Four Screenplays (1960). 
Context: When we experience a film, we consciously prime ourselves for illusion. Putting aside will and intellect, we make way for it in our imagination. The sequence of pictures plays directly on our feelings. Music works in the same fashion; I would say that there is no art form that has so much in common with film as music. Both affect our emotions directly, not via the intellect. And film is mainly rhythm; it is inhalation and exhalation in continuous sequence. Ever since childhood, music has been my great source of recreation and stimulation, and I often experience a film or play musically.

Way, Imagination

“Unfortunately most films are flooded with music”

Vangelis (1943) Greek composer of electronic, progressive, ambient, jazz, pop rock, and orchestral music

2012
Context: On film music: "There are cases in which a film can stand on its own without music, but if music is used, it's better for it to touch the soul and create emotions that the rest of the film cannot do. Music should continue emotions where words finish. Unfortunately most films are flooded with music, due to mediocre scripts and to producers' and directors' lack of talent".

Music

“I’ve been really fortunate to be able to do different kinds of films in different scales, different genres, different kinds of roles, and that is important to me.”

Keanu Reeves (1964) Canadian actor, director, producer and musician

“I loved the material when I first read it, and the experience of making the film (The Matrix) was a great one. So when we came around to complete the trilogy, I just signed on board without even reading the scripts because the experience of the first film was so good.”

Keanu Reeves (1964) Canadian actor, director, producer and musician

Love, Making love, Reading

“Sometimes when you make a film you can go away for three months and then come back and live your life. But this struck a much deeper chord. I don’t have the ability yet to speak about it in an objective.”

Keanu Reeves (1964) Canadian actor, director, producer and musician

Life, Making love

“Films have never shown the kind of relationship that can exist between two women.”

Brigitte Bardot (1934) French model, actor, singer and animal rights activist

Women

“My life has been a privilege. I come from a very humble family. No one in my family was an artist or worked in film…I’m not special. I completely understand that what I did, anyone can do it … I learned to do the things I love to do when I didn’t want to do them.”

Edward James Olmos (1947) American actor and director

On his journey as an actor in “Edward James Olmos Reflects on the Legacy of ‘Stand and Deliver,’ Three Decades Later” https://remezcla.com/features/film/edward-james-olmos-stand-and-deliver-30-years/ in Remezcla (2019 May 30)

Love, Life, Making love, Family

“On Martin Scorsese: Martin has brought so much to the art form of film, and he is not the type of person who would be upset by not receiving an Oscar, although it is a practical joke that he has not won an Academy Award after all these years. Whatever opinions critics will have of The Aviator, I really think that this is a great piece of art: once again, he has made a great classic film.”

Leonardo DiCaprio (1974) American actor and film producer

http://www.flixster.com/actor/leonardo-di-caprio/leonardo-dicaprio-quotes

Art, Thinking, Personality

“Watch the movie closely, and you’ll see how personal it is. Here’s a film in which cinema brings down the Nazi regime, metaphorically and literally. What could possibly be better than that? In this story, cinema changes the world, and I fucking love that idea!”

Quentin Tarantino (1963) American film director, screenwriter, producer, and actor

Source: Interview with The London Paper about Inglourious Basterds http://www.thelondonpaper.com/going-out/whats-new/quentin-tarantino-the-big-interview

Love, World, Making love, Idea

“Once you overcome the one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films.”

Bong Joon-ho (1969) South Korean film director and screenwriter

Source: As quoted from his Oscar acceptance speech, cited in many media even year later, e.g. in "Lost in translation? The one-inch truth about Netflix’s subtitle problem" in The Guardian (14 October 2021) https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/oct/14/squid-game-netflix-translations-subtitle-problem

“How would you describe your transition from teenager to adult? The truth is that I barely notice it, I spend all my time between studies and filming, I live between Madrid and Barcelona, I barely have time to think about it, I think I lived more as an adult than as a teenager, but very happy.”

Berta Castañé (2002) Spanish actress and model

¿Cómo describirías tu paso de adolescente a adulta? La verdad es que apenas me estoy dando cuenta, paso todo el tiempo entre los estudios y los rodajes, viviendo entre Madrid y Barcelona, casi no tengo tiempo de pensar en ello, creo que llevo más vida de adulta que de adolescente, pero muy feliz. From the interview Hablamos con Berta Castañé, la estrella en ascenso de la pequeña pantalla https://www.marie-claire.es/moda/modelos/fotos/entrevista-a-berta-castane-241588061091, marie-claire.es, 28 July 2020.

Happiness, Truth, Thinking, Study

“In general they are intoxicated by the fame of mass culture, a fame which the latter knows how to manipulate; they could just as well get together in clubs for worshipping film stars or for collecting autographs. What is important to them is the sense of belonging as such, identification, without paying particular attention to its content.”

Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) German sociologist, philosopher and musicologist known for his critical theory of society

Their applause, cued in by a light-signal, is transmitted directly on the popular radio programmes they are permitted to attend. They call themselves 'jitter-bugs', bugs which carry out reflex movements, performers of their own ecstasy. Merely to be carried away by anything at all, to have something of their own, compensates for their impoverished and barren existence. The gesture of adolescence, which raves for this or that on one day with the ever-present possibility of damning it as idiocy on the next, is now socialized.
Perennial fashion — Jazz, as quoted in The Sociology of Rock (1978) by Simon Frith, ISBN 0094602204

Star, Sense

“Perhaps it sounds ridiculous, but the best thing that young filmmakers should do is to get hold of a camera and some film and make a movie of any kind at all.”

Stanley Kubrick (1928–1999) American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and editor

“The picture's over. Now I have to go and put it on film.”

Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980) British filmmaker

“Life is your art. An open, aware heart is your camera. A oneness with your world is your film. Your bright eyes and easy smile is your museum.”

Ansel Adams (1902–1984) American photographer and environmentalist

Life, World, Smile, Art

“Sometimes I feel like I have walked into the middle of a movie. Maybe I can make my own movie. The film will be the story of my life. No, not my life, but of this experience. I'll call it what the lady who is the prosecutor called me. MONSTER.”

Walter Dean Myers book Monster

Source: Monster

Life, Feeling

“Three films a day, three books a week and records of great music would be enough to make me happy to the day I die.”

Francois Truffaut (1932–1984) film director

Happiness, Books, Music

“My films are therapy for my debilitating depression. In institutions people weave baskets. I make films.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

People

“The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder.”

Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980) British filmmaker

“Get it all on record now – get the films – get the witnesses – because somewhere down the track of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

According to TruthOrFiction.com https://www.truthorfiction.com/did-dwight-eisenhower-say-someday-someone-will-claim-it-never-happened-in-1945/, this sentence first appeared in a letter to the editor published on DominicanToday.com, accompanied with the words "he did this because he said in words to this effect". It was probably a paraphrase of the above bold sentence. Disputed

History

“Compared to a novel, a film is like an economy pizza where there are no olives, no ham, no anchovies, no mushrooms, and all you’ve got is the dough.”

Louis De Bernières (1954) English novelist

“Every great film should seem new every time you see it."
Roger Ebert”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Time

“I love the detail about the workings of the human heart and mind that only fiction can provide - film can't get in close enough.”

Nick Hornby (1957) English novelist

Love, Heart

“I know the best moments can never be captured on film, even as I spend nearly half my life trying to do just that.”

Rosie O'Donnell (1962) American comedienne, television personality and actress

Life

“This must be a real horrorshow film if you're so keen on my viddying it.”

Anthony Burgess book A Clockwork Orange

Source: A Clockwork Orange

“I could dance with you till the cows come home. Better still, I'll dance with the cows and you come home."
Groucho Marx was never one to pass up an opportunity for a play on words and this occurs in his dialogue of the 1933 film Duck Soup:”

Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian

Home, Dance

“Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever…it remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything.”

Aaron Siskind (1903–1991) American photographer

Aaron Sussman, cited in: The Amateur Photographer's Handbook, (1973), p. vi
Sussman, Aaron. The Amateur Photographer's Handbook. Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1973.
Context: Photography is more than a means of recording the obvious. It is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever, whether it be a face or a flower, a place or a thing, a day or a moment. The camera is a perfect companion. It makes no demands, imposes no obligations. It becomes your notebook and your reference library, your microscope and your telescope. It sees what you are too lazy or too careless to notice, and it remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything.

Love, Way, Feeling

“It is very difficult to be a hero without an audience, although, in a sense, we are each the hero of a peculiar, half-ruined film called our life.”

Sebastian Barry book The Secret Scripture

Source: The Secret Scripture

Life, Sense

“When I write, I disturb. When I show a film, I disturb. When I exhibit my painting, I disturb, and I disturb if I don't. I have a knack for disturbing.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

Painting

“finally has figured out there aren't enough quiet little British films around to protect her from the real world”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

World

“When we travel, we are like a film at the moment of exposure; it is memory that will develop it.”

Max Frisch (1911–1991) Swiss playwright and novelist

Travel, Memory

“Film lovers are sick people.”

Francois Truffaut (1932–1984) film director

People, Lovers

“He understands now why kisses in movies are filmed the way they are, with the camera endlessly circling, circling: the ground is unsteady under his.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

Way, Understanding, Kiss

“To paint comic books as childish and illiterate is lazy. A lot of comic books are very literate — unlike most films.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/alan-moore-the-reluctant-hero-64407.html Context: If I write a crappy comic book, it doesn't cost the budget of an emergent Third World nation. When you've got these kinds of sums involved in creating another two hours of entertainment for Western teenagers, I feel it crosses the line from being merely distasteful to being wrong. To paint comic books as childish and illiterate is lazy. A lot of comic books are very literate — unlike most films.

Books, Painting

“It's no good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently or if your favorite films wouldn't even speak to each other if they met at a party.”

Nick Hornby (1957) English novelist

Future, Relationship

“What keeps me interested--and it always does--is how can she be a bad actress on film but a good one in reality?”

Bret Easton Ellis book Imperial Bedrooms

Source: Imperial Bedrooms

Reality

“The bastard form of mass culture is humiliated repetition: content, ideological schema, the blurring of contradictions—these are repeated, but the superficial forms are varied: always new books, new programs, new films, news items, but always the same meaning.”

Roland Barthes (1915–1980) French philosopher, critic and literary theorist

La forme bâtarde de la culture de masse est la répétition honteuse: on répète les contenus, les schèmes idéologiques, le gommage des contradictions, mais on varie les formes superficielles: toujours des livres, des émissions, des films nouveaux, des faits divers, mais toujours le même sens.
"Modern," in The Pleasure of the Text (1975)

Books

“Phillip is a repository of random snatches of film dialogue and song lyrics. To make room for all of it in his brain, he apparently cleared out all the areas where things like reason and common sense are stored.”

Jonathan Tropper (1970) American writer

Source: This is Where I Leave You

Sense

“The film needs to be slower and duller at the start so that the viewers who walked into the wrong theatre have time to leave before the main action starts”

Andrei Tarkovsky book Sculpting in Time

On being told that his film Stalker should be faster and more dynamic by officials at Goskino.
Sculpting in Time (1989)

Time

“The stars are filming us for no one.”

Carol Ann Duffy (1955) British writer and professor of contemporary poetry

Star

“Today, I demand that a film express either theor the. I am not at all interested in anything in between; I am not interested in all those films that do not pulse.”

Francois Truffaut (1932–1984) film director

Source: The Films in My Life

“That's how it is with relationships, it's a part of life, and all the great love songs and poems and films have been written by people who were standing where I was that morning as Simon shut the door. Doesn't make it any easier though.”

Jane Green (1968) British writer

Source: Straight Talking

Love, Life, People, Parting

“I suppose all of my films have a common theme. If I think about it, though, the only theme I can think of is really a question: Why can’t people be happier together?”

Akira Kurosawa (1910–1998) Japanese film maker

People, Question, Thinking

“The one I wore to kill Jabba (my favorite moment in my own personal film history), which I highly recommend your doing: find an equivalent of killing a giant space slug in your head and celebrate that.”

Carrie Fisher book The Princess Diarist

Source: The Princess Diarist

History, Personality

“One of these days they'll be making a film where the whole human race gets wiped out in a nuclear war, but everything works out in the end.”

Haruki Murakami book A Wild Sheep Chase

Source: A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982)
Context: I watched an old American submarine movie on television. The creaking plot had the captain and first officer constantly at each other’s throat. The submarine was a fossil, and one guy had claustrophobia. But all that didn’t stop everything from working out well in the end. It was an everything-works-out-in-the-end-so-maybe-war’s-not-so-bad-after-all sort of film. One of these days they’ll be making a film where the whole human race gets wiped out in a nuclear war, but everything works out in the end.

War

“Me too." I agree fervently. "Every film should definitely have a message."

Which is true. I mean… take the Lord of the Rings movies- they've got loads of messages. Like "Don't lose your ring.”

Sophie Kinsella book Shopaholic and Sister

Source: Shopaholic and Sister

“I would say that there is no art form that has so much in common with film as music. Both affect our emotions directly, not via the intellect.”

Ingmar Bergman (1918–2007) Swedish filmmaker

Art, Music

“If you truly love film, I think the healthiest thing to do is not read books on the subject. I prefer the glossy film magazines with their big colour photos and gossip columns, or the National Enquirer.”

Werner Herzog (1942) German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor and opera director

Such vulgarity is healthy and safe.
Herzog on Herzog (2002)

Love, Books, Photo, Thinking

“We knew exactly what we wanted in each other. And even so, it ended. One day it stopped, as if the film simply slipped off the reel.”

Haruki Murakami book Dance Dance Dance

Source: Dance Dance Dance

“And there lies the horror: the past we remember is devoid of time. Impossible to reexperience a love the way we reread a book or resee a film.”

Milan Kundera book Ignorance

Source: Ignorance

Love, Books, Way, Time

“The angel said, "I like black-and-white films more than color because they're more artificial. You have to work harder to overcome your disbelief. It's sort of like prayer.”

Jonathan Carroll (1949) novelist, short story writer

Source: The Ghost in Love

Angels, Color

“My reaction to porno films is as follows: After the first ten minutes, I want to go home and screw. After the first twenty minutes, I never want to screw again as long as I live.”

Erica Jong (1942) Novelist, poet, memoirist, critic

Home

“After 100 years, films should be getting really complicated. The novel has been reborn about 400 times, but it's like cinema is stuck in the birth canal.”

Harmony Korine (1973) American film director and screenwriter

Birth, Time

“Usually people look at you when they're talking to you. I know that they're working out what I'm thinking, but I can't tell what they're thinking. It is like being in a room with a one-way mirror in a spy film.”

Mark Haddon book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Source: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

People, Way, Thinking

“In feature films the director is God; in documentary films God is the director.”

Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980) British filmmaker

God

“It is an example of what films can do, how they can slip past your defenses and really break your heart.”

David Gilmour (1946) guitarist, singer, best known as a member of Pink Floyd

Past, Heart

“I was always a reluctant actor! I continue to be that. I announce a project, the camera rolls and I'm happy. I'm fortunate to be doing leading parts even now. Except for my mentor K. Balachander, for whom I can do even a walk-on part. When he directed his 100th film, I just walked in to do a small role. I just clowned around on camera.”

Kamal Haasan (1954) Indian actor

Aamir's choice of films makes Kamal Haasan happy

Happiness, Parting

“Fernand Léger's film, 'Ballet Mecanique' is the result of the desire for a picture in motion.”

Alexander Calder (1898–1976) American artist

1930s - 1950s, Statement from Modern Painting and Sculpture', (1933)

“I’ve known that there have been a kind of select group of people, amazing die-hard supporters, even through some of the more, shall we say, odd films. These people, bless them, have stuck with me the whole length of the road. To say that you appreciate it is not nearly enough. It’s part of the essence, or fuel, of what keeps you going.These people are my boss; they’re the ones who keep me employed. A couple of times, they could have said, Let’s abandon him. And they haven’t. You don’t want to let them down.”

Johnny Depp (1963) American actor, film producer, and musician

Quoted in Steven Daly, "The Maverick King," Vanity Fair (November 2004)

People, Support, Time, Parting

“Fame is what gets people to go watch your film. I'm just glad to be in a film i believe in. And if it take's fame to get people there, then it's my job. But i'd rather be a ghost writer than have my name down.”

River Phoenix (1970–1993) American actor, musician, and activist

Details Magazine, (1991)

People

“A filmmaker should never assume he's superior to his subject. I often find that even the simplest topic remains an enigma. The best film portraits not only evoke that enigma but ingest it in a process that renders what's invisible visible.”

Damian Pettigrew Canadian filmmaker

On documentary subject matter, Le Parisien (May, 2003)

“Because I "needed" them for school I had previously extorted a chemistry set, a soldering iron a magnifining glass, a tape recorder, a fountain pen, a Stanley knife, a compass, a torch, a set of oil paints, a speedometer for my bike, some sea monkeys, an Electra set, a halliwell's, a subscription to weapons and warfare and a ticket to the opening night of the Hamilton film festival. I'm sure if I'd claimed I needed one for biology she'd have hooked me up with a prostitute.”

Tony Martin (comedian) (1964) New Zealand comedian and writer

a nest of occasionals (book).

School, Painting, Sea, Night

“In film, life-and-death struggles make you sit up, lean forward a little bit. They amplify things happening, in smaller ways, in all of us. These things show up in relationships. They show up in struggles and bring them to a critical point.”

David Lynch (1946) American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor

As quoted in "Lost Highway" interview by Mikal Gilmore in Rolling Stone (6 March 1997)

Life, Death, Way

“With chemical film, it was possible to alter photographs, but you had to be an expert. That's not true any more. The LA Times fired a photographer at the beginning of the Iraq War for editing two shots together. Photography is crumbling. Certainly it is for the newspapers a bit now, isn't it? There will be painting again, absolutely!”

David Hockney (1937) British artist

Interview with Martin Gayford, " 'Photography is crumbling,' " http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2004/05/18/bahock18.xml The Telegraph, (18 May 2004) 2000s

War, Time, Painting

“Satirists, be careful. In the 1931 film by René Clair Vive la Liberte a song says, "Work is freedom." In 1940 the sign on the gates to Auschwitz said: "Arbeit macht frei."”

Stanisław Jerzy Lec book Unkempt Thoughts

Unkempt Thoughts (1957)

Freedom

“I like to watch old films. Meet Me in St Louis, Cul-de-Sac and Buffalo 66 are some of my favourites.”

Stella Vine (1969) English artist

Williams-Akoto. "My Home: Stella Vine, artist" http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/house-and-home/property/my-home-stella-vine-artist-517456.html, The Independent, (2005-11-30) On her favourite films.

“The start of a film is like a gateway, a formal entrance-point. The first three minutes of a film make great demands on an audience's patience and credulity. A great deal has to be learnt very rapidly about place and attitude, character and intent and ambition.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Watching Water

Patience

“I’ve no patience with Hindi films. I find them so unreal. But some I was taken to, like Raj Kapoor’s Satyam Shivam Sundaram.”

Khushwant Singh (1915–2014) Indian novelist and journalist

Reply to Raj Kapoor who had asked him loudly "I’m a bosom man. What about you?"
I Don't Know One Editor In India Who Is Well-Read

Patience

“I run upright mostly when I see daylight, so if you watch film you'll see I don't get hit in the chest much.”

Eric Dickerson (1960) American football player

Pro Football Hall of Fame biography http://www.profootballhof.com/hof/release.jsp?release_id=1313

“(DVD introduction) Well, welcome to your very own DVD of me, DVB, and ‘Mind Control’. If you weren’t expecting me and thought you were buying Reginald Perrin, then press eject now before you begin vomiting. Otherwise, please, please ensure that you are sitting in an extreme level of comfort, preferably in pre-worn slippers and, I trust, with your extended family around you. If you have seen the film ‘Signs’ and would like to wear the pointy tin foil hats now would be a good time to put them on you can’t be too careful. Well, pphhh, goodness me, er, it’s been a meteoric rise over these last years. The money and sex are exhausting and I have you the viewer to thank. Thanks. We’ve put together some of the pieces from the specials and series in glistening digital format, each pixel hand picked and gently polished and brought to you in wide-sound, surround-screen enjoyment. I hope you enjoy watching them as much as I’ll enjoy the royalties from this, which is enormously. If you don’t like it and HMV won’t take it back because you’ve got sticky all over it then the disc makes an excellent beer coaster or wheels for a space truck or can be immense fun just putting it on your finger and [waggling it], like that. But I hope you do like it. When I first started developing these techniques I had no idea that they were going to prove at all popular and for all my nancing about and staring I’m actually really excited to have a DVD out and can’t wait to go and find it in Discount Books & Puzzles next to the Dizzie Gillespie CD box sets and disappointing erotica. I hope you like it and if you do, please go and buy another one.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Mind Control (1999–2000) or Inside Your Mind on DVD

Money, Books, Family, Hope

Josef Albers (1888–1976) German-American artist and educator

4 quotes from: 'The Color in my Painting'
Homage to the square' (1964)

Color, Painting, Dependency

“I don't see myself working in a Hollywood film.”

Preity Zinta (1975) film actress

Famous quotes
Source: [apunkachoice.com, No move to Hollywood: Preity, http://www.apunkachoice.com/scoop/bollywood/20060921-0.html, 22 November, 2006]

“I like the fact that I'm involved in a career that gives me so many different mediums to perform in. The entertainment industry in the last 10 years has been so fragmented, from scripted programming to reality. There's work not just on TV and in film, but you know, on your cell phone, on the Internet. There's so many [venues] now, and each of them looking for quality content, that, you know, I'm just going with the flow. And I'm having fun with every wave.”

Ian Ziering (1964) American actor

'Sharknado's' Ian Ziering: 'Maybe This Is My Pulp Fiction Moment' http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/sharknados-ian-ziering-maybe-is-my-pulp-fiction-moment-584659 (July 12, 2013)

Reality

“It would seem essential to distinguish the emergent forms of a new commercial culture - beginning with advertisements and spreading on to formal packaging of all kinds, from products to buildings, and not excluding artistic commodities such as television shows (the "logo") and best-sellers and films - from the older kinds of folk and genuinely "popular" culture which flourished when the older social classes of a peasantry and an urban artisanat still existed and which, from the mid-nineteenth century on, has gradually been colonized and extinguished by commodification and the market system.”

Fredric Jameson (1934) American academic

Source: Postmodernism: Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991), Chapter 2: Theories of the Postmodern

“The way the anima initially manifests in an individual man usually bears the stamp of his mother's character. If he experienced her in a negative way, then his anima often takes the form of depressive moods, irritability, perpetual malcontent, and excessive sensitivity. If the man is able to overcome these, precisely these things can strengthen his manliness. Such a negative mother anima will endlessly whisper within a man: "I'm a nothing," "It doesn't make sense anyhow," "It's different for other people," "Nothing * gives me any pleasure," and so on. Continual fear of disease, impotence, or accidents are her work, and she constellates a general sense of gloom. Troubled moods like these can intensify to the point of temptations to suicide; thus the anima can become a demoness of death. She appears in this role in Cocteau's film Orpheus.”

Marie-Louise von Franz (1915–1998) Swiss psychologist and scholar

Archetypal Dimensions of the Psyche (1994), The Anima as the Woman within the Man

Death, People, Pleasure, Fear

“Arre bhai…there is so much more to Indian music than those beats. I have done bhangra…nothing against it. But why do we present only that to the Indian and global audience. Punjabi language and music has become the language of the film industry unfortunately. Be it Singh is King or London Dreams or New York Beats are the same. agreed you cannot use classical or folk music in New York or Singh is King but London Dreams — it's supposed to be a musical. Music should have been the soul of it. But that is the weakest thing in the film. So much could have been done — classical music and folk music could have been used. But they didn't. They want to finish of work ASAP. Quantity, not quality has taken over.”

Waheeda Rehman (1938) Indian actress

Quote, Grace personified: Waheeda Rehman

Dreams, Music, Soul

“Charlie Chaplin and I would have a friendly contest: Who could do the feature film with the least subtitles?”

Buster Keaton (1895–1966) American actor and filmmaker

Interview with Studs Terkel (1960)

“Going to see Godzilla at the Palais of the Cannes Film Festival is like attending a satanic ritual in St. Peter's Basilica. It's a rebuke to the faith that the building represents. Cannes touchingly adheres to a belief that film can be intelligent, moving and grand. Godzilla is a big, ugly, ungainly device to give teenagers the impression they are seeing a movie. It was the festival's closing film, coming at the end like the horses in a parade, perhaps for the same reason.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/godzilla-1998 of Godzilla (26 May 1998) Reviews, One-and-a-half star reviews

Faith, Intelligence, Horse

“Errol Flynn was an excellent fencer. He also knew his lines, something I greatly respect in an actor. Of course there was one glaring inconsistency with his professionalism. Errol also drank on the set, something I greatly disliked. You couldn't stop him. If the director prohibited alcohol on the set, then Errol would inject oranges with booze and eat during breaks. Everything good that we got on film was shot early in the day. He started gulping his water early in the morning and by four P. M. was in no shape to continue filming.”

Maureen O'Hara (1920–2015) Irish-American film actress and singer

Source: Tis Herself (2004), p.214-215

Alcohol, Water

“It's the worst kind of bad film: the kind that gets you all worked up and then lets you down, instead of just being lousy from the first shot.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/snake-eyes-1998 of Snake Eyes (7 August 1998) Reviews, One-star reviews

Quotes about film page 2

Quotes about film
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