Director Quotes

Like anywhere, we had to make people understand that we were there with good intentions, and that we were there with respect. We started making contacts with the people in the neighborhood three months before shooting began, so that everyone involved was comfortable.

It's good that they've seen it, but how can I be satisfied after working for two years making a film which I hope will make a difference, when the government sees the film and does nothing about it?

In France they spend six months training policemen, then they give them a gun and put them on the streets, and I don't know that that's enough. The film's not against the police - although I think that if someone wants to be a cop there's got to be a problem.

I'm not a politician; I'm lucky to be a filmmaker and to be able to express myself through the films I make.

I have a hard enough time speaking for myself - I don't pretend I can be a spokesman for anybody. I have no interest in playing that role.

Hood films now are made by studios and have nothing to do with the reality they supposedly represent.

HATE, even if it's making money. is an underground movie, that's how it was made. It's a film about police brutality in the largest sense, it's about the whole of society and not just about the hood.

The End of the Affair is almost like a play.

The Company of Wolves is about how society teaches young women to look at themselves, and what to be afraid of. It's about a girl learning that the world of sensuality and the unknown is not to be feared, that it's worth getting your teeth into.

The Company of Wolves doesn't belong in any category, so it's difficult to prepare an audience for it. It's not a horror film, it's not a fantasy film, it's not a children's film - so what is it?

No, I just thought of a story and wrote down what I saw. It was about two kids in Ireland who went around killing people. It was called Travelers, and it was made as an independent film.

Never make a promise - you may have to keep it.

My conception of it was that in a normal film you have a story with different movements that program, develop, go a little bit off the trunk, come back, and end.

It's the same thing in a way, although writing a book is a very solitary thing.

It's the opposite journey from what I've usually done with films. I find it very easy to go from, say, a lit, pleasurable environment, like what you see outside there, to a very dark place. But the opposite journey, which is what this movie takes, is much more complicated.

It's nice to work with Hollywood because there is never any question of resources put at your disposal to make a film as long as it is the right thing to do.

It's hard to know whether certain characters come to life or not, they either come to have their own life or they don't. I've written many things in which the characters just remain inert.

It is extremely difficult to get movies that cost more than $40 million to be made these days.

Initially with The Butcher Boy, there was this kid growing up in this strange, weird environment that I remember from when I was a kid. And Patrick's vision was so complete there.

In Dreams... well, I was slightly overcompensating with that. I was a bit like a director for hire, so maybe I was putting too much imagery that was familiar to me into it.

I've had three novels published, and I was working a little bit in theater in Ireland. I wrote one film script just to see what it would turn out like.

I've also worked hard portraying an Ireland which is fast disappearing. Ireland was a very depressed and difficult place in the 1980s, and I've tried to include that in the script. I worked really hard to find the heart of the book.

I'm less comfortable making American movies because I don't know them so well.

I took two years away from making films to write a novel.

I mean I grew up in Ireland, so one would have to be consciously blinkered not to have reflected on the issue of political violence because that was the story since I was 19 years old or 20.

I do enjoy working with writers.

I can't do a film if I don't start with the writing.

For me, the filmmaking has to be about the dramaturgy.

For me now, it's about what you would write and what you wouldn't write, and that's how I select what I am going to do. It can be quite nice being brought a concept by a studio for me to work on.

Films have gotten leaner and leaner, cutting out all variations from the story line.