When the Beatles came in, I really concentrated on making a lot of movies. Those beach films that we did were a lot fun. They hit with an audience that related to what we were trying to do on the screen. That kept me going all through that Beatle period.
I made mistakes in drama. I thought drama was when actors cried. But drama is when the audience cries.
Television is chewing gum for the eyes.
I spend a lot of time visiting friends, watching video cassette movies, and things like that.
Horror is so often a 'thinkless' genre, sort of considered popcorn movies, but you really put a lot of, not just heart and soul, but a lot of physical energy into it.
It has been my experience that work on the screen clarifies stage portrayals and vice versa. You learn to make your face express more in making movies, and in working for the theater you have a sense of greater freedom.
I think you kind of hope for people to gush over movies, but I think the opposite way is great sometimes, too. I'd rather have a movie that you're angry about and that you're talking about the next day, than something you forget about when the popcorn goes into the trash.
When I know the data that's being shared and I'm asked explicitly for my consent, I want some sites to understand my habits. It helps them suggest books for me to read or movies for my family to watch or friends for us to connect with.
I have three kids who like Harry Potter so I was sort of aware of it. You can't really move from it: it's on buses, in stores, it's everywhere. One of my kids has read the books; the other two are too small but they like the movies.
For all of my movies, half of the press always hates it.
The American horror movies are more moralistic, they have not only good characters, but characters where the ultimate danger is death. What I like about European cinema is they have another sense of what's good, what's bad, and sometimes all the characters are far more complex than just that. It's less binary, the Giallo genre.
I like subtitles. Sometimes I wish all movies had subtitles.
That's probably when I get the most angry at American movies, when they just so cynically manipulate the audience without even trying to give a good story.
The computer tends to equalize everything, all the movies are slowly blending together, the way they look.
The funny thing is, I was not a fan of horror when I was a kid. I was scared to watch scary movies. And then along came 'Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein,' and 'Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy.' And I like those films because they made scary funny, and it was kind of ironic that I ended up doing the 'Hotel' movies.
I play a little guitar, write a few tunes, make a few movies, but none of that's really me. The real me is something else.
The secret to film is that it's an illusion.
I thought Star Wars was too wacky for the general public.
Learning to make films is very easy. Learning what to make films about is very hard.
If the boy and girl walk off into the sunset hand-in-hand in the last scene, it adds 10 million to the box office.
It's hard work making movies. It's like being a doctor: you work long hours, very hard hours, and it's emotional, tense work. If you don't really love it, then it ain't worth it.
Changes are not unusual - I mean, most movies, when they release them, they make changes. But somehow, when I make the slightest change, everybody thinks it's the end of the world.
There's no difference between movies and television. None at all. Except in a lot of cases, television's much better than movies.
I've always been a follower of silent movies. I see film as a visual medium with a musical accompaniment, and dialogue is a raft that goes on with it.
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.
I was never interested in being powerful or famous. But once I got to film school and learned about movies, I just fell in love with it. I didn't care what kind of movies I made.
Plays close, movies wrap and TV series eventually get cancelled, and we were cancelled in three season.
When I'm depressed and I feel low thinking that good movies are not made any more, then I put on his movies and I watch them. I laugh and I cry and I have great pleasure.
The problem with my mind is it sways from side to side. The idea of me fantasizing about becoming an actor quickly led to depression. 'No, it was never going to happen to me.' I was a sixteen-year-old kid on the other side of the world from where they made movies. Scottish actors never really got play. There was Sean Connery, and that was it.
It was always a dream as I was growing up. I would watch movies, mostly American movies, and be so engrossed in those stories, all I wanted to do was be there. I wanted to be part of that romance or that fantasy or be that warrior or that struggling soul who finally makes it good.
I had a couple of really cool friends when I was a kid, and we'd find cool music and movies and show them to each other. My friend Dennis had a copy of 'A Clockwork Orange' and he'd already seen it once, and he was like, 'We need to watch this.' I was sleeping over his house - and I think we were literally 15 - and we watched it.
I always wish the hotels were like they are in movies and TV shows, where if you're in Paris, right outside your window is the Eiffel Tower. In Egypt, the pyramids are right there. In the movies, every hotel has a monument right outside your window. My hotel rooms overlook the garbage dumpster in the back alley.
It seems when I put together records, as Henley used to say, they're just like movies. They should have action, tension, love scenes, places to relax.
My family loves movies. My dad and I used to eat a huge breakfast, and then we'd just go hang out at the theater all day together. We loved movies like 'Indiana Jones' and 'James Bond.' We were both big action-adventure movie fans. So I kind of grew up with an appreciation for film.
I used to love martial arts movies starring Bruce Lee and Jean Claude Van Damme. In one of Van Damme's movies, he would break a pine tree. I would kick banana trees because I used to live on a farm. My father would get mad at me because I would break all of the banana trees around.
The subjects that I am working are movies that say something. They are shouting or criticising something. I would hate to play a princess waiting for the prince to come and give her a kiss.
Growing up I watched a lot of Hong Kong movies, I watched big stars like Chow Yun Fat, Andy Lau, and Tony Leung on the big screens.
Hong Kong movies were really popular in my generation.
I like horror movies, and in fact I like them even more now after making one. I just think they're much more liberating because you don't really have to apply a very strict logic.
I don't want to dress up a picture with just my face.
The representation of gay characters on screen is important for us all to think about because there are sadly too few representations of gay characters on screen in mainstream cinema. If Marvel starts making movies about gay superheroes, then we'll be in a really great place. We're not at that place.
A few years after 'Melrose Place,' when the luster of 'Melrose Place' wore off and what was left was just the stink, and I was just doing bad TV movies, that was a personal low point. I felt I needed to stop doing those, and I did.
I wanted to make a movie, because the whole life of the movies appealed to me. You work hard for three or four months, then you don't work at all for a couple of months.
I thought movies were handed down by God. I knew that theater was made by people because I saw the people in front of me, but movies seemed like they were delivered, wholly made, from Zeus's head or something.
I just don't feel like I've seen very many movies about 17-year-old girls where the question is not, 'Will she find the right guy' or 'Will he find her?' The question should be, 'Is she going to occupy her personhood?' Because I think we're very unused to seeing female characters, particularly young female characters, as people.
I produced six movies with Amy Robinson since the very early '80s.
For eight years I did effects for other movies until I got my movie made.
For me, real life is hard work. Making movies is like a vacation for my soul.
More and more, as I grow older, I find myself looking for inspiration in painting, illustration, videogames, and old movies.
With bad movies, I have this image in my head of the director and the editor in the editing room watching a scene that is not happening, looking at each other and saying, 'Put some music in there.'