97 Quotes by William Friedkin

The studios are making fewer films. They are making more expensive films. Profits are tougher to come by. Not only because of the expense of production. But also because of the expense of promotion and hype. To boil that all down, it's more about hype than it is about filmmaking.

When you go to a studio with something you want to make, or they come to you with something they want to make, more often than not, it's a tent pole. Not something one single person is really passionate about on a creative level.

I don't look back or analyze my films. I just make them. It's for someone else to look at.

There are films that I've made that I like a little bit more than the others. But the films that I mostly watch, and see over and over again, are not my own.

I've seen my own films close to a thousand times in one form or another. When you edit them. When you shoot them. Then you run them over and over again for sound and music. Then you'd go to premiere screenings, and have to do promotional screenings in other cities. I can't watch any of my old films.

With all of my films that are on DVD and Blu-ray, I have spent weeks with them in a color timing room. Just changing or enhancing them. I have been desaturating the color. Sometimes I will make a scene bluer or redder. I do use the new medium. I believe in it.

In the case of a film like The Exorcist or To Live and Die in L.A., I saw the whole movie in my head before I went to shoot it. I never did storyboards, or anything like that. I had the film in my head.

I'm not a fan of 3D. But I am a huge fan of digital imagery. Because it allows a filmmaker much more latitude to appreciate their own visions and dreams.

I don't think sexuality defines a person. It's one small part of who you are, in my view. You are many things, and I never felt that people were defined by their sexuality solely.