Martin Scorsese
It's interesting that these themes of crime and political corruption are always relevant.
Working with HBO was an opportunity to experience creative freedom and 'long-form development' that filmmakers didn't have a chance to do before the emergence of shows like 'The Sopranos.'
I'm re-energized by being around people who mean a lot to me.
It's very good for me to remember what actors go through.
I don't like being in houses alone.
I don't think there's a subject matter that can't absorb 3-D; that can't tolerate the addition of depth as a storytelling technique.
I mean I have a project that I have been wanting to make for quite a while now; and basically, it's a story of my parents growing up in the Lower East Side.
I still dislike phones, yeah!
I know that I come from mid-20th century America, urban, specifically downtown New York, specifically an Italian-American area, Roman Catholic - that's who I am. And a part of what I know is there's a decency to people who tried to make a living in the kind of world that was around us and also the Skid Row area of the Bowery; it impressed me.
We can't keep thinking in a limited way about what cinema is. We still don't know what cinema is. Maybe cinema could only really apply to the past or the first 100 years, when people actually went to a theater to see a film, you see?
I would ask: Given the nature of free-market capitalism - where the rule is to rise to the top at all costs - is it possible to have a financial industry hero? And by the way, this is not a pop-culture trend we're talking about. There aren't many financial heroes in literature, theater or cinema.
When I was growing up, I don't remember being told that America was created so that everyone could get rich. I remember being told it was about opportunity and the pursuit of happiness. Not happiness itself, but the pursuit.
Can a film really change anything? I mean, what was the last time? Maybe the Italian neo-realists, where they became the voice and the heart and the soul of Italy, a nation that had been destroyed. I don't know.
Movies touch our hearts, and awaken our vision, and change the way we see things. They take us to other places. They open doors and minds. Movies are the memories of our lifetime. We need to keep them alive.Collection: Memories
Every scene is a lesson. Every shot is a school. Let the learning continue.Collection: School
Always stay open to surprise.Collection: Surprise
Your job is to get your audience to care about your obsessions.Collection: Motivational
More than ninety percent of directing a picture is the right castingCollection: Casting
I love movies - it's my whole life, and that's it.Collection: Movie Love
I always tell the younger filmmakers and students: Do it like the painters used to...Study they old masters. Enrich your palette. Expand the canvas. There's always so much more to learn.Collection: Students
There's a way that the force of disappointment can be alchemized into something that will paradoxically renew you.Collection: Disappointment
Music and film are inseparable. They always have been and always will be.Collection: Film
The storyboard for me is the way to visualise the entire movie in advance.Collection: Way
We’re face to face with images all the time in a way that we never have been before... Young people need to understand that not all images are there to be consumed like fast food and then forgotten – we need to educate them to understand the difference between moving images that engage their humanity and their intelligence, and moving images that are just selling them something.Collection: Moving
The most important thing is the script.Collection: Important
You have to put yourself in a situation, a lifestyle, that makes you do the work. Even if it's a monastery.Collection: Lifestyle
The first element that I connected with was the emotion. Sorry, that's how it goes.Collection: Sorry
You don't make up for your sins in church. You do it in the streets. You do it at home. The rest is bullshit and you know it.Collection: Home
It is not the most brilliant that excel in film, but the most patient!Collection: Excellence
I’m not interested in a realistic look, not at all, not ever. Every film should look the way I feel.Collection: Looks
I look for a thematic idea running through my movies and I see that it's the outsider struggling for recognition. I realize that all my life I've been an outsider, and above all, being lonely but never realizing it.Collection: Running
In truly great films - the ones that people need to make, the ones that start speaking through them, the ones that keep moving into territory that is more and more unfathomable and uncomfortable - nothing's ever simple or neatly resolved. You're left with a mystery.Collection: Moving
You can be born-again and believe in Jesus, believe in Jesus' ideas and try to live them out, without becoming totally intolerant of other people.Collection: Jesus
Always get to the set or the location early, so that you can be all alone and draw your inspiration for the blocking and the setups in private and quiet. In one sense, it's about protecting yourself; in another sense, it's about always being open to surprise, even from the set, because there may be some detail that you hadn't noticed. I think this is crucial. There are many pictures that seem good in so many ways except one: They lack a sense of surprise, they've never left the page.Collection: Block
Being independent... is being innovative out of inspiration as well as necessity.Collection: Inspiration
You've got to love something enough to kill it.Collection: Love
[Kubrick] was unique in the sense that with each new film he redefined the medium and its possibilities. But he was more than just a technical innovator. Like all visionaries, he spoke the truth. And no matter how comfortable we think we are with the truth, it always comes as a profound shock when we're forced to meet it face-to-face.Collection: Unique
Could you double-check the envelope?Collection: Envelopes
If you’re looking for the origins of film culture in America, look no further than Amos Vogel.Collection: America
The more you see, especially being young, the more you see the past, the more you can draw upon that and the more you can make the present and the future. It's how you process the past and at oftentimes in the picture, there are references to certain imagery from certain pictures, and certain novels.Collection: Past
The tone of the picture and the atmosphere was in my head and in my blood in a way once I'd decided to make the picture. I had to find my way through that to choose, select, emphasise certain visual elements and sound.Collection: Blood
I do prefer doing more takes. There's something very organic that comes from the first take, but certain things come out. More details come out, in the way another actor says something. It's always this investigative process. You come further and further to the truth, the more you escalate. I like to do a lot of takes. I have a hunger for it. I like to see what there is to discover in a scene, that hasn't been thought of.Collection: Details
I'm obsessed with New York. I just find it so remarkable. You really treasure this city when you go to different countries and you see that there is no mix. When you get back to the city, it's such an exciting place.Collection: Country
I've been thrown out of schools and fired from jobs. I don't want to work. I can honestly say I haven't done an honest day's work in my life.Collection: Jobs
I have a desire to tell stories. And I'm never quite satisfied.Collection: Desire
The problem with anger is that it's so consuming. You've got to take it easy on yourself at a certain point.Collection: Problem
As a kid I watched the Academy Awards on television and always wanted one - or several - like one of my favorite directions, John Ford. He won six. On the other hand, Orson Welles, who's on the top of my list, didn't win any. Alfred Hitchcock didn't win any. Howard Hawks didn't win any.Collection: Kids
If you don’t like the films of Samuel Fuller , then you just don’t like cinema.Collection: Cinema
You have to remain strong. That's the kind of filmmaker I want to encourage. Orson Welles was the one who said, you know, you can learn anything you need to know about filmmaking- that's camera, sound, celluloid, video at this point- in four hours. It has nothing to do with anything. It has nothing to do with it... It has to do with what you want to say. If you feel you have something to say, you'll find that way to get it said, on film, and not let anyone or anything chip away at that or tarnish it, because it's something special and precious.Collection: Strong