Tatia Rosenthal

Terrence Malick

“[On Badlands (1973)] I tried to keep the 1950s to a bare minimum. Nostalgia is a powerful feeling; it can drown out anything. I wanted the picture to set up like a fairy tale, outside time, like Treasure Island. I hoped this would, among other things, take a little of the sharpness out of the violence, but still keep its dreamy quality.”

Allison Anders

“There are many reasons a filmmaker makes a film, but the only one that matters is to be of service to the story and to be the best storyteller you can be.”

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.”

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.”

Michel Gondry

“Every great idea is on the verge of being stupid.”

Robert Aldrich

“A director is a ringmaster, a psychiatrist and a referee.”

Ethan Coen

“We create monsters and then we can't control them. ”

Joel Coen

“The characters are the result of two things-first, we elaborate them into fairly well-defined people through their dialogue, then they happen all over again, when the actor interprets them. ”

Don Siegel

“Most of my pictures, I’m sorry to say, are about nothing. Because I’m a whore. I work for money. It’s the American way.”

Wes Anderson

“I know that feeling of looking back and thinking, that part I'd like to fix. So I obsessively try not to compromise.”