Nicolas Roeg
Movies are not scripts - movies are films; they're not books, they're not the theatre.Collection: Movies
Mirrors are the essence of movies.Collection: Movies
And later I thought, I can't think how anyone can become a director without learning the craft of cinematography.Collection: Learning
I hate it when people talk about Tony Curtis and say: 'His real name was Bernie Schwartz... ' That was just the name that he was given at birth. It's not the person he lived his life with, and became.
Tony Curtis was a joy to work with. He had a curious innocence that is very young and wise at the same time.
I think the big studios shaped and formed the artists that they put under contract.
Our memory and the movies keep movie stars alive for us, and Tony Curtis is still a star.
We can't get our youth back.
I like women in film. I like women in general, but I especially like to show them on film. They are not ciphers.
When I went to the cinema as a boy, when I saw a war film, I thought the general was the star, and that Cary Grant was an extra. I had no idea about the structure of film, but I loved going to the cinema.
Oscars are won with two or three shots only, because if it's really beautifully photographed, you don't really notice it until the astounding moment emphasizes it.
You cannot intellectualize yourself out of obsession. You cannot cure yourself of it.
When you admire someone's work, you are amazed by who you think they are.
I think I've never really liked the idea of genre, a film that follows the rules of a genre.
I like the probability of the impossible.
I love that perhaps we don't see the things that are there because we have no yardstick to see things by, to compare them.
Any cuts that are done to any film, they're usually things that have some personal resonance for whoever has got permission to cut it and feels they should. But it has very little to do with the actual weight, the truth, of the piece.
Fear has many faces.
Nature repeats itself, but it never starts from the beginning.
I made a film called 'Bad Timing' that I thought everybody would respond to. It was about obsessive love and physical obsession. I thought this must touch everyone, from university dons down.
In life, we all learn from everyone.
Film remains completely mystical and mysterious to me.
The great difference between screen acting and theatre acting is that screen acting is about reacting - 75% of the time, great screen actors are great reactors.
You can't hide in life. We are all being watched by some larger vision.
Any change in form produces a fear of change, and that has accelerated. Marketing is the death of invention, because marketing deals with the familiar.
But in marketing, the familiar is everything, and that is controlled by the studio. That is reaching its apogee now.
Children's finger-painting came under the arts, but movies didn't.
I was very glad later when I was directing that I wasn't in the hands of a cinematographer and hoping that he would do it well. I would know what he was doing, and we could discuss how that scene would look.
Marketing is a very good thing, but it shouldn't control everything. It should be the tool, not that which dictates.
Some people are very lucky, and have the story in their heads. I've never storyboarded anything. I like the idea of chance. What makes God laugh is people who make plans.
The rules are learnt in order to be broken, but if you don't know them, then something is missing.
There was a village watercolour society and they'd come and paint in my field. I watched them from the window, the way they would struggle this way and that to find the perfect moment. God has made every angle on that beautiful, and I felt that tremendously.
They think something's gone wrong, but in Don't Look Now, for instance, one scene was made by a mistake. It's the scene where Donald Sutherland goes to look for the policeman who's investigating the two women.
Years ago I had a house in Sussex, it was like Arcadia, with an old Victorian bridge, a pond and the Downs.
You make the movie through the cinematography - it sounds quite a simple idea, but it was like a huge revelation to me.
I imagine if aliens came down to Earth, they'd actually be quite tall; people seem to get everything right about extraterrestrials but the size!
I've always admired the tradition of storytellers who sat in the public market and told their stories to gathered crowds. They'd start with a single premise and talk for hours - the notion of one story, ever-changing but never-ending.
There's no one 'right' way of making a science fiction movie; there's no one way of making any kind of movie, really!
Oh, some of my films have been attacked with absolute vitriol!
I was always a bit arty-farty as a boy. 'Come on, Mr. Arty-Farty,' my sister used to say to me.
I came up the old-fashioned way - tea boy, cutter, focus-puller, cinematographer - but I wasn't myself old-fashioned.
When a book is just a plot, you know, two men fight for the love of a woman in a wild frontier, I immediately ask, 'Why?'
Marketing is such a key issue; in fact, the marketing department is often involved in the approval of scripts now.
A lot of my movies have come to be thought about only years after the fact, and I'm sad about that but also happy about it in a way, as it's given them longevity.
People are mistaken to view cinema as some sort of gimmick. It's very much ingrained in the ways in which we understand each other.
When I look around, I begin to understand what Socrates meant when he said, 'How much there is in the world I do not want.'
My father was an extraordinary man.
When my sister and I were very young, my father used to tell us fairy stories that he'd made up. My mother was always telling him that he should write them down, but he would say, 'Well, they've all been done before. There are so many blooming books in the world - why should I write another one?'
I don't look back on any film I've done with fondness or pride.
I've never tried to enhance my reputation. Never moved upwards from one thing to another. That sort of thing is of no interest to me at all.