Roman Polanski

“You have to show violence the way it is. If you don't show it realistically, then that's immoral and harmful. If you don't upset people, then that's obscenity.”

Frank Henenlotter

“When I do exploitation it gives me the freedom to go a little nuts.”

Jack Hill

“I liked the Warner Bros. movies of the forties. That’s my main influence. The noirs and the gangster films.”

Agnès Varda

“I'm not interested in seeing a film just made by a woman - not unless she is looking for new images.”

Joseph W. Sarno

“I was born a rebel. In film, I get outside of the acceptable framework as often as possible. I think that is what a filmmaker’s goal should be — to get outside of what, at the time, is the established framework.”

Bob Saget

John Huston

“The directing of a picture involves coming out of your individual loneliness and taking a controlling part in putting together a small world. A picture is made. You put a frame around it and move on.”

Maïwenn

Raoul Servais

Eddie Romero

Tommy Wiseau

“As a director, I have to feel realism from actors, and they can’t be plastic. The words for me are secondary, but the chemistry between the actors is most important.”

Danny DeVito

“It’s fun to be on the edge. I think you do your best work when you take chances, when you’re not safe, when you’re not in the middle of the road, at least for me, anyway.”

Claude Jutra

Danny Boyle

“There's a certain truth that you do end up making the same film again and again so if you vary the genre you have a chance of breaking that cycle.”

Juan Piquer Simón

“I didn’t have any trauma with shooting anything, nor any problem coming back to my normal life because I never went out of normality. To me shooting is just an exercise in creativity, no matter what kind of scene I’m shooting, a killing, a love scene, or whatever”

Don Hertzfeldt

“Some people can do great things with CG, but that world just doesn’t interest me or inspire me. I’ve never felt really creative or intuitive using software. I like paper and pens and paint. I need to angle real lights on my artwork and work with my hands and build props. Computers just take all that fun out of it.”

Werner Herzog

“It is my duty to direct because the films might be the inner chronicle of what we are, and we have to articulate ourselves. Otherwise we would be cows in the field.”

Sylvester Stallone

“I'm not handsome in the classical sense. The eyes droop, the mouth is crooked, the teeth aren't straight, the voice sounds like a Mafioso pallbearer, but somehow it all works.”

Georges Méliès

“We sat with our mouths open, without speaking, filled with amazement.”

Kevin Smith

“There's something to be said for failing. It's not the failure you feel, it's the failure that people project when something disappoints. You're back to ground zero, where there's no expectations, and that's where I like to be.”