Francis Ford Coppola
I gladly, I voluntarily gave up the kind of commercial film career I had going as soon as I had enough money to finance my own films.Collection: Finance
I think a sequel is a waste of money and time. I think movies should illuminate new stories.Collection: Movies
As long as I can make lots of money in other businesses, I'll continue to subsidize my own work.Collection: Money
I was never sloppy with other people's money. Only my own. Because I figure, well, you can be.Collection: Money
I don't think there's any artist of any value who doesn't doubt what they're doing.Collection: Art
Most Italians who came to this country are very patriotic. There was this exciting possibility that if you worked real hard, and you loved something, you could become successful.Collection: Patriotism
Art depends on luck and talent.Collection: Art
When I was going for my graduate degree, I decided I was going to make a feature film as my thesis. That's what I was famous for-that I had my thesis film be a feature film, which was 'You're a Big Boy Now.'Collection: Famous
We were raised in an Italian-American household, although we didn't speak Italian in the house. We were very proud of being Italian, and had Italian music, ate Italian food.Collection: Food
You have to really be courageous about your instincts and your ideas. Otherwise you'll just knuckle under, and things that might have been memorable will be lost.Collection: Courage
We had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little, we went insane.Collection: Money
I think cinema, movies, and magic have always been closely associated. The very earliest people who made film were magicians.Collection: Movies
Anyone who's made film and knows about the cinema has a lifelong love affair with the experience. You never stop learning about film.Collection: Learning
It takes no imagination to live within your means.Collection: Imagination
Without a doubt, I was born to want to make cinema, but the kind of cinema I want to make is not like commercial movies, which I enjoy myself, but I wanted to be the kind of filmmaker who wrote original work, sort of like a novelist would who deals with who we are and our times or our relationships.Collection: Movies
Steven Spielberg is unique. I feel that the kinds of movies he loves are the same kinds of movies that the big mass audience loves. He's very fortunate because he can do the things he naturally likes the best, and he's been very successful.Collection: Movies
My family were symphonic musicians and in the opera. Also, it was my era, the love of radio. We used to listen to the radio at night, close our eyes and see movies far more beautiful than you can photograph.Collection: Movies
Usually, the stuff that's your best idea or work is going to be attacked the most.Collection: Best
I had a heartbreaking experience when I was 9. I always wanted to be a guard. The most wonderful girl in the world was a guard. When I got polio and then went back to school, they made me a guard. A teacher took away my guard button.Collection: Teacher
I was always the black sheep of the family and always told that I was dumb, and I had a low IQ and did badly in school.Collection: Family
I have more of a vivid imagination than I have talent. I cook up ideas. It's just a characteristic.Collection: Imagination
I believe that filmmaking - as, probably, is everything - is a game you should play with all your cards, and all your dice, and whatever else you've got. So, each time I make a movie, I give it everything I have. I think everyone should, and I think everyone should do everything they do that way.Collection: Time
I like to work in the morning. I like to sometimes go to a place where I'm all alone where I'm not going to get a phone call early that hurts my feelings, because once my feelings are hurt, I'm dead in the water.Collection: Morning
I was raised as a Catholic, but I didn't like the Catholic Church at all. I thought the nuns were mean.
The essence of cinema is editing. It's the combination of what can be extraordinary images of people during emotional moments, or images in a general sense, put together in a kind of alchemy.
I like simplicity; I don't need luxury.
When I was sixteen or seventeen, I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a playwright. But everything I wrote, I thought, was weak. And I can remember falling asleep in tears because I had no talent the way I wanted to have.
I had a number of very strong personalities in my family. My father was a concert flutist, the solo flute for Toscanini.
Frank Capra was a prop man, I think. John Ford was a prop man. It was a little bit of a father and son thing, and you kind of worked your way up.
I liked to work in a shop down in the basement and invent things and build gadgets.
When I was about 9, I had polio, and people were very frightened for their children, so you tended to be isolated. I was paralyzed for a while, so I watched television.
I had a number of teachers who hated me. I didn't do well in school.
Everything I do is personal. I have never made a movie that didn't have very strong personal resonance.
I wrote the script of Patton. I had this very bizarre opening where he stands up in front of an American flag and gives this speech. Ultimately, I was fired. When the script was done, they hired another writer and that script was forgotten.
We do things for good reasons that are bad.
My film is not a movie; it's not about Vietnam. It is Vietnam.
Sound is your friend because sound is much cheaper than picture, but it has equal effect on the audience - in some ways, perhaps more effect because it does it in a very indirect way.
My big goal in life was always to figure out how I can make a lot of money so I can go off and make films irrespective of the opinion of the three or four critics who seem to rule the roost.
When I was 13, I worked for Western Union. When the telegrams came in, I would glue them on the paper and deliver them on my bicycle.
Anything you build on a large scale or with intense passion invites chaos.
When that happens - when risk is taken and the filmmakers dive into the subject matter without a parachute - very often what you get it something with those qualities that make it age well with the public.
When I do a novel, I don't really use the script, I use the book; when I did Apocalypse Now, I used Heart of Darkness. Novels usually have so much rich material.
I remember teachers who really singled me out for their discouragement.
Listen, if there's one sure-fire rule that I have learned in this business, it's that I don't know anything about human nature.
You're in a profession in which absolutely everybody is telling you their opinion, which is different. That's one of the reasons George Lucas never directed again.
You ought to love what you're doing because, especially in a movie, over time you really will start to hate it.
They needed someone to write a script of The Great Gatsby very quickly for the movie they were making. I took this job so I'd be sure to have some dough to support my family.
The stuff that I got in trouble for, the casting for The Godfather or the flag scene in Patton, was the stuff that was remembered, and was considered the good work.
The professional world was much more unpleasant than I thought. I was always wishing I could get back that enthusiasm I had when I was doing shows at college.
Ten Days That Shook The World, by Eisenstein, I went to see it, and I was so impressed with this film, so impressed with what cinema could do.