David Fincher
For a number of years, I'd been around the kind of people who financed movies and the kind of people who are there to make the deals for movies. But I'd always had this naive idea that everybody wants to make movies as good as they can be, which is stupid.Collection: Movies
Some people go to the movies to be reminded that everything's okay. I don't make those kinds of movies.Collection: Movies
For a romantic comedy to be three hours long, that's longer than most marriages.Collection: Romantic
I don't know how to depict intelligence.Collection: Intelligence
I think intelligence is totally subjective; it's like sexiness.Collection: Intelligence
I like characters who don't change, who don't learn from their mistakes.
In film, we sculpt time, we sculpt behaviour and we sculpt light.
A movie is made for an audience and a film is made for both the audience and the film-makers.
A lot of people hated 'Alien 3.'
My idea of professionalism is probably a lot of people's idea of obsessive.
If I could be anyone, it would be Brad Pitt.
The fact is, you don't know what directing is until the sun is setting and you've got to get five shots and you're only going to get two.
I like the idea of R-rated franchises.
Entertainment has to come hand in hand with a little bit of medicine.
And I love shooting football.
When I'm watching somebody act, it's a behavior editorial function - I look at someone act, and I might say, 'I don't believe him when he says that.' I don't know why I don't believe him, probably because the people that I've met, they don't act like that when they say stuff like that and mean it.
Everything seems really simple on paper until you take a camera out of the box.
You can make movies for a select audience, but you have to market it to them.
I learn the most from making my own mistakes.
How do you shoot a 150-day movie? You shoot it one day at a time.
We were working with this lousy print and it just wasn't going to be good enough. I said that we should get the original negative and do it from that. Well, a couple guys pointed out that the negative was locked up over at Deluxe.
Oh, yeah, I love DVD's. I don't have what you'd call an extensive collection, maybe a couple of hundred or so. But I have something on almost all the time.
There are some movies I can watch over and over, never get sick of. I'll put one of those on and be puttering around the house. Then a certain scene will come on and I'll just have to go over and watch.
You know, I don't think I've ever listened to someone's commentary. Ever.
I'm totally anti-commercialism.
I was a disinterested student.
I like studios. I just don't like bureaucracies.
You won't see me on Barbara Walters; Oprah, that's not who I am.
I loved Luke Skywalker and I loved Darth Vader and I loved watching them work it out.
Perfume is pretty good because nobody has to hold the product by their face or use it.
Again, a franchise to me doesn't have to be a billion dollar title.
It's a bad day when you don't get the work done that you need to get done or you don't get it done to the satisfaction.
When you make the kind of movies I make, you get weird letters from people.
Hollywood is great. I also think it's stupid and small-minded and shortsighted.
Yet as a director, I don't feel you have to identify with your characters as a requirement to make a movie.
In film, we sculpt time, we sculpt behavior and we sculpt light.Collection: Light
You have a responsibility for the way you make the audience feel, and I want them to feel uncomfortable.Collection: Responsibility
People will say, 'There are a million ways to shoot a scene,' but I don't think so. I think there are two, maybe. And the other one is wrong.Collection: Thinking
Directing ain't about drawing a neat little picture and showing it to the cameraman. I didn't want to go to film school. I didn't know what the point was. The fact is, you don't know what directing is until the sun is setting and you've got to get five shots and you're only going to get two.Collection: Movie
Human beings are amazing at finding ways to waste their own time.Collection: Way
Entertainment has to come hand in hand with a little bit of medicine. Some people go to the movies to be reminded that everything's okay. I don't make those kinds of movies. That, to me, is a lie. Everything's not okay.Collection: Lying
I don't know how much movies should entertain. To me I'm always interested in movies that scar. The thing I love about JAWS is that I've never gone swimming in the ocean again.Collection: Ocean
I don't think that digital technology will ever take away the humanity of storytelling, because storytelling is entirely, in and of itself, a wholly human concern.Collection: Technology
Filmmaking isn’t if you can just strap on a camera onto an actor, and steadicam, and point it at their face, and follow them through the movie, that is not what moviemaking is, that is not what it’s about. It’s not just about getting a performance. It’s also about the psychology of the cinematic moment, and the psychology of the presentation of that, of that window.Collection: Psychology
People go to the movies to see things they haven’t seen before. Call me a radical.Collection: People
Sometimes people freak out when you shoot 40 takes of something. They start looking at you like, "What did I do wrong?", and its like "No. It's not wrong. It's just that we are going to try something different."Collection: People
We're designed to be hunters and we're in a society of shopping. There's nothing to kill anymore, there's nothing to fight, nothing to overcome, nothing to explore. In that societal emasculation this everyman is created.Collection: Fighting
Hire the right people and get the hell out of the way.Collection: People
I have demons you can't even imagine.Collection: Demon
I learned just to be a belligerent asshole, which was really: "You have to get what you need to get out of it." You have to fight for things you believe in, and you have to be smart about how you position it so that you don't just become white noise.Collection: Smart