I always loved watching movies because I loved what certain moments inside of films did to me.
It's very difficult to break into motion pictures, but it's oddly easier for directors today because of independent films and cable, who have inherited for the most part those films of substance that the studios are reluctant to finance.
I think I'm a character actress at heart, and I think my work is character work for the most part. I'm not the lead of any films - which is not to say that I wouldn't ever want to be; it is just to say that hasn't been my path.
Kissing in films, it's just another thing you have to do. It kind of becomes as technical as how to open a door, really.
The Hollywood movies are more like novels, and the kinds of films I make are more like poems.
The one worry that I always have with TV is that it's such a long commitment. You sign on to be there for a good amount of time, and then you can't go and do films and things like that.
I was raised going to the movies with my grandmother as a kid. And then I'd come home, and my best friend and I would act out the films that we saw.
I like romance in films. I like love in films.
If you have a career like mine, which is so identified with Hollywood, with big studios and stars, you wonder if maybe you shouldn't go off and do what the world thinks of as more personal films with lesser-known people. But I think I've fooled everybody. I've made personal films all along. I just made them in another form.
I never really worked in Hollywood. Some American producers came to Europe to shoot films with me, so it's a different situation... It was not my aim.
I understand working-class culture, tribalism and the ethos of violence, so I make films about these things.
I think the reason why a lot of the Spanish films do so well, and are so well done, is because the public really respects it and wants it.
I prefer to commit 100 per cent to a movie and make fewer films, because it takes over your life.
People loved the first two 'Toy Story' films so much, and the last thing I wanted to do was make a disappointing third film.
It's not easy to strap yourself down to a desk and bash on a keyboard when you know you can direct lots of films, because directing films is fun and interactive and gregarious. Writing isn't.
Barbara Stanwyck movies drove me nuts, like 'Ball of Fire' and 'Double Indemnity.' I used to go cuckoo when I would see those films.
As a writer, one of the things we all learned from the movies was a kind of compression that didn't exist before people were used to watching films. For instance, if you wanted to write a flashback in a novel, you once had to really contextualize it a lot, to set it up. Now, readers know exactly what you're doing. Close-ups, too.
I have registered few titles like 'Bharat Bandh,' 'Calendar Girl,' 'Money Politics.' The titles just intrigued me, so I registered. I had a title, 'Jai Ho,' which I gave to Sohail Khan for his next film with Salman Khan. These are typical Madhur Bhandarkar kind of films. I may make a film or not on such titles... not sure yet.
I hope they get something of interest out of it, but I'd rather they all hate it and I like it, instead of vice versa... I make films to please myself first, and if the audience likes them, all the better.
I think I'm a very sentimental person. Conscious or not, that's what draws me to the kind of films I want to make.
In feature films the director is God; in documentary films God is the director.
I want to make films that people will say, 'That movie rocked!'
For any director with a little lucidity, masterpieces are films that come to you by accident.
Well, I think I've made 44 films and only like four times I've played real characters I'm just drawn to people who have a pioneer spirit, this extraordinary energy and commitment to their cause.
Mr. Reagan spent World War II, the global conflict fought and won by his generation, making training films in Hollywood.
I don't think of Storefront Hitchcock or Stop Making Sense as documentaries, I think of them more as performance films.
I love gritty drama. I'm passionate about films and drama that make you think - hard-hitting, gravelly characters.
If you take the '70s with Blaxploitation pictures, there was a proliferation of black-content films and motion pictures, television, stage plays and so forth at a time when Hollywood was in trouble financially, and it was cheaper to do black films to keep the lights on until they could reestablish themselves.
I have always acted in films where women have an equal, if not bigger, role than mine. Don't the kind of films you do reflect your personality?
In my experience, not just in shooting films but in the commercials I've done, initially, it's very exciting for the community, and its a real novelty. Very quickly, though, they realize there's a buck to be had, and it becomes annoying, and they lose their patience pretty quick.
Most of the top actors and actresses may be working in ten or twelve films at the same time, so they will give one director two hours and maybe shoot in Bombay in the morning and Madras in the evening. It happens.
I like doing family films.
I never want to set a belief that a woman has to direct a woman's film, meaning she can't direct a man's film. If only films can be directed by people who are exactly the same as that, it's only gonna limit all of the women more.
If my films don't show a profit, I know I'm doing something right.
For me, competition is good; that is what keeps me on my toes and keeps me going. I am always trying to better my own work, do better than my earlier films... do films that are challenging and exciting for me.
Television and cable have become the new independent films, in a sense, for writers and actors to gravitate towards. That's why I like short films, too; I love doing readings, audio books, working with young filmmakers; anything that keeps you from getting blase about yourself or in a rut.