Paul Schrader
I teach a course in screenwriting at Columbia, but I've never taken a course and I've never read a book about it!
People who act against their own best interests are interesting characters.
Ultimately, it's an illusion that you can understand yourself.
I still think like a critic, and I still analyze films like a critic. However, it's not possible to write criticism if you're making films.
Those artists who say that somehow therapy or analysis will thwart their creativity are completely misinformed. It's absolutely the opposite: it opens closed doors.
I want to be happy; why do I do things that make me unhappy?
If you write interesting roles, you get interesting people to play them. If you write roles that are full of nuance and contradiction and have interesting dialog, actors are drawn to that.
As screenwriters, we struggle with our own success. We have wallpapered our world and now we can't get anyone to notice the picture we just hung.
I was raised as a Calvinist, which is doctrine-driven. And though there are many things wrong with Calvinism, you are at least encouraged to argue about things.
'Taxi Driver' wasn't autobiographical in terms of the actual events, but I did draw on my own mental state.
The only economic paradigm that movies have ever known is capitalism. There were no church sponsors or state patronage. The idea was that if you'd pay to see it, we'll make it for you.
The secret of the creative life is to feel at ease with your own embarrassment.Collection: Creative
Screenplays are not works of art. They are invitations to others to collaborate on a work of art.Collection: Art
I could be just a writer very easily. I am not a writer. I am a screenwriter, which is half a filmmaker... But it is not an art form, because screenplays are not works of art. They are invitations to others to collaborate on a work of art.Collection: Art
The secret of the creative life is how to feel at ease with your own embarrassment. We're all in the dirty laundry business and we're being paid to take risks and look silly. Race car drivers get paid to risk their lives in a more concrete way; we get paid to risk our lives in an emotional way.Collection: Silly
Don't ever let the viewer settle in and get ahead of you.Collection: Settling
Contradiction is the heart and soul of character and drama. You're always looking for it. I loved her so much I hit her; that's character. I loved her so much I hit her again; that's even more character.Collection: Drama
There's the generation that made the rules, the generation that codified them. The generation that broke them - that's mine. The generation that laughed at them - that's Tarantino's. And now there's a generation that doesn't know that there were any.Collection: Generations
There's no escape. I'm God's only man.Collection: God
The clock is impotent; mechanical time does not affect those living in an eternal present.Collection: Doe
One of the things that I do like about filmmaking is that you find out how to solve new problems.Collection: Problem
I don't think it's very useful to open wide the door for young artists; the ones who break down the door are more interesting.Collection: Writing
Anything that doesn't bore me I think is doable because it's keeping me awake.Collection: Thinking
I would not have made any of my films or written scripts such as Taxi Driver had it not been for Ingmar Bergman, What he has left is a legacy greater than any other director.... I think the extraordinary thing that Bergman will be remembered for, other than his body of work, was that he probably did more than anyone to make cinema a medium of personal and introspective value.Collection: Thinking
All these teachers and [screenwriting] books mean you see movies that have been worked over by more committees wielding more rules, that all originality and authorship is lost. That's why you're seeing superstars like Brad Pitt in THE FIGHT CLUB and Tom Cruise in MAGNOLIA. They're desperately searching for people writing and directing off-formula movies.Collection: Teacher
Once you have a situation that is fresh, then you sort of believe in it and it becomes normal. So you do end up with protagonists that haven't been in other movies before.Collection: Believe
Let's just shoot in black and white. Don't explain why. Have no reason for it. Just do it because it's interesting.Collection: Black And White
There's something wrong - the performance, the weather, the set design, the lighting. Something is not working. And so you say, "Give me 10 minutes." When you're first directing, you're terrified. But when you've been in that situation enough times, you know that under pressure, it will come to you.Collection: Weather
Because many of the films I've made have had an intellectualedge, it's harder for me to lie. It's harder for me to go to peoplewith money and say I don't care about art, all I care about iscommerce; all I really want to do is make money.Collection: Art
When you have people who are embarrassing themselves for a living, who are making themselves look foolish and vulnerable and emotional for a living, your day-to-day reality is going to be a high-wire act. People are going to get in fights. People are going to get upset. People are going to walk off set. People are going to call each other names. It happens on every film that has any emotional people.Collection: Fighting
Film noir is not a genre. It is not defined, as are the western and gangster genres, by conventions of setting and conflict, but rather by the more subtle qualities of tone and mood. It is a film 'noir', as opposed to the possible variants of film gray or film off-white.Collection: White
You know, when you're in your twenties you use a great deal of symbolism. You somehow think that a character standing beneath a cross is more interesting than a character standing underneath a billboard, but when you get a little older you realize that there's not much difference.Collection: Character
You think it's a blessing to know what God wants? I'll tell you what he wants. He wants to push me over! Can't he see what's inside of me? All my sins.Collection: God
I get bored very easily. I find most movies boring. I go to movies and ask, "How do they stay awake making this?"Collection: Bored
The best advice is essentially that thing in the back of your mind that you really aren't sure of, and when you start to hear other people bring up the same concerns, you say, "Okay, let's address that."Collection: People
Words are a completely different form of expression. The word P-E-N-I-S is an entirely different form of communication than a photograph of the same thing. HCollection: Communication
That's just my disposition - to create a situation where you have to come up with something.Collection: Disposition
Nobody has shot a strip club in black and white in a long time.Collection: Black And White
You can't take contradiction away. Part of the fun of it is that the contradiction never really quite goes away.Collection: Fun
All the animals come out at night.Collection: Animal
I had this whole issue of doing a crime film in the 2010s. The genre's been mined very, very heavily. Post-Scorsese, post-Tarantino, post-Guy Ritchie, what do you do? I wasn't attracted to pulp so much as all of a sudden I had a pulp problem. I had to find a way to make this interesting, because there's a lot of crime films that come out on VOD every week, and a number of these star Nicolas Cage.Collection: Stars
I was looking for people who didn't have any preconceptions about films, what I call the "post-rules" generation.Collection: People
Now I see it clearly. My whole life has pointed in one direction. I see that now. There never has been any choice for me.Collection: Destiny