138 Quotes About Filmmaking

Stories give people the feeling that there is meaning, that there is ultimately an order lurking behind the incredible confusion of appearances and phenomena that surrounds them. This order is what people require more than anything else.

Someone might ask, if the dynamic of innovation consists of schema and revision, where does true originality come from? Is there no single work we can point to as the ultimate source of this or that new storrytelling strategy? I'm inclined to say there is no such source. Artists working in mass art forms find originality by revising schemas in circulation, or by revising ones that have fallen into disuse.

All tales, then, are at some level a journey into the woods to find the missing part of us, to retrieve it and make ourselves whole. Storytelling is as simple - and complex - as that. That's the pattern. That's how we tell stories.

When you see a filmmaker getting too fancy... you can bet he's worried either about his story or his ability to tell it.

Vanessa insisted that film was exactly like poetry. Nothing necessarily had to happen; you just had to feel something.

The saddest journey in the world is the one that follows a precise itinerary. Then you're not a traveler. You're a f@@king tourist.

Filmmaking is not the work of the weak-minded. It may not be rocket science, but it requires ten times more strength of the mind than that.

Oscar may be the world’s most glorious way of honoring your work, but the real award for a filmmaker is the contentment which you receive from making your film.

The more of those little light bulbs that can turn on the better. Eventually you'll have enough to light up a movie screen.