Director Quotes

I've just been very, very lucky with the film having been introduced in the right way.

I wanted to make sure that the environment of the shooting itself was not that controlled, and the way to go about that course was to work with as small a crew as possible.

I think ultimately if you have a very high expectation of your audience and you know exactly what it is you're trying to express through the medium of film, there will always be an audience for you.

I think the situation in Toronto is such that there are funding organizations which make it easy for a film to raise more money than it needs and very often that works against a film.

I think if you look at the themes that are presented in the film, some are inherently social, and I think that any film which deals with the family is dealing with the smallest social unit in our society - and in a sense it is a question of scope.

I suppose I had these concerns but I really felt that I had to keep my scope very, very concentrated.

I mean, if you are directing actors to do one thing and then directing them to do something else entirely because the one thing you wanted them to do may not work, then you are just shattering their confidence in the project.

As a producer, I think one of the most important decisions you make is not necessarily the material you are working on but the production apparatus that you choose to develop the project with, and that determines what funding you go to, it determines many factors.

My parents taught me to believe that through the creative act, we're able to transcend and give a response to desecration.

I have always felt that this story is universal. When I began to understand the details of the history, I felt that the most compelling aspect was not what happened, but what continues to happen and how it is denied.

You can talk about Holocaust denial, but it's really marginal for the most part. What is compelling about the Armenian genocide, is how it has been forgotten.

There's so few people in this town with a conscience.

Shame is an unhappy emotion invented by pietists in order to exploit the human race.

If you still want to kill him, do me a favor and take him outside. Those are new sheets.

I reckon this could mean another 10 million at the box office.

Don't just stand there, idiot. Call a doctor, and then help me find a nose.

Nothing matters but the facts. Without them, the science of criminal investigation is nothing more than a guessing game.

Being thrown out of this place is significantly better than being thrown out of a leper colony.

It's been my experience that every time I think I know where it's at, it's usually somewhere else.

You know, I think everything I do cinematically for the rest of my life will probably have some direct route back to Jonathan. But I love him to death. He's like my best friend and my big brother.

What I think happens today is that a lot of filmmakers look at other films that are retro pieces, like L.A. Confidential, and say, oh, that's period. We didn't want to do the stereotypical stuff.

There are a lot of films that are drug dramas, and we didn't want to tell Scarface again.

The thing that's great about those guys at Miramax is the Weinstein brothers. They are the two funniest guys I've ever met in my life.

That's why I'm really trying to produce my own stuff. This film was so good, because I produced it myself, and developed it, and made it with New Line, which is a smaller studio, so I was in control of a lot of stuff that I wasn't in control of for my other films.

I'm at Miramax now, where I've actually been treated like a Prince.

I was influenced by European movies, old Fellini, old Kurosawa - any sort of foreign film.

I tried to stick to my game plan, which was always being aware of what my A story was - the love story between a father and his son, and that son and his daughter.

I think, on a larger note, that filmmakers and studios should start to tuck it in a little bit, because films wouldn't have the pressure they have if the word wasn't out about how expensive they were.

I felt that as long as we were being honest, and that we didn't bend the truth to accomplish another goal, to be entertaining or to be a happy ending, I was confident that we'd be able to tell the story the way it happened.

And then we watched an amazing number of movies from the late '60s and '70s, which is my favorite time, and we studied their camera movements, their stocks, the way they lit stuff, the colors they used.