37 Quotes by David Mackenzie

I spent the first part of my career trying to avoid genre because I felt like genre, in some way, was cliche.

I really don't want to make the same film twice, so I am conscious of going after material that is significantly different to anything I've done before.

As I get older, I'm looking more and more for films that are actually about something rather than just narrative vehicles.

I travel light as a director. I don't have monitors on my set.

I used to regard genres as being embedded in cliches, and I always felt funny about the need we have to label things. But I'm happy to think of 'Starred Up' as a prison drama, although we tried to smuggle in some elements of family drama in there.

Event cinema is what it is, and I understand why it's successful. It started with things like 'Jaws,' which are extraordinary movies. But what we've lost are great character films which are beautifully directed and had great movie stars in them. Films that were about something rather than about spectacle.

Filmmaking is hard. I mean, it's not that hard, but it is hard to find your way through a system because there's a lot of people, there's money, there's a big machine to kind of make it - and how to find methods and processes that allow it to continue to be a lively process and a creative process.

Most of the films I've tried to make I've ended up making. And they don't necessarily go in the order you want to do. So I haven't got a huge list of undone films or stuff that's just been abandoned forever.

When you make a movie, you don't know how it'll turn out. You can only guess.