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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.

-Martin Scorsese

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I Do Prefer Doing

Martin Scorsese

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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.

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Sometimes God Picks You Up And Tells You, "you've Been Messing Around Now. You're Going To Have To Stop This, Stop That, But I'll Give You Another Chance." And You Wonder Why You're Given Another Chance. It Must Be For Something; It Must Be To Celebrate Life.

I'm Trying Not To Let The Anger And The Violence That Erupt Take Over My Life. I Guess It Comes With The Growing Process, I Don't Know. A Little Mellowing.

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I Don't Agree With Everything He Did In His Life, But We're Dealing With This Howard Hughes, At This Point. And Also Ultimately The Flaw In Howard Hughes, The Curse So To Speak.

Well The Thing Is That The New York Of 1846 To 1862 Was Very Different From Downtown New York Now. Really Nothing From That Period Still Exists In New York.

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.

Hong Kong Cinema Is Something You Can't Duplicate Anyway.

It's Interesting That These Themes Of Crime And Political Corruption Are Always Relevant.

If It's A Modern-day Story Dealing With Certain Ethnic Groups, I Think I Could Open Up Certain Scenes For Improvisation, While Staying Within The Structure Of The Script.

I'm In A Different Chapter Of My Life. As Time Goes By And I Grow Older, I Find That I Need To Just Be Quiet And Think. There Have Been Periods When I've Locked Myself Away For Days, But Now It's Different - I'm Married And We Have A Daughter Who Is In My Office The Whole Time.

As A Child I Had Terrible Asthma.

Every Scene Is A Lesson. Every Shot Is A School. Let The Learning Continue.

You Don't Make Pictures For Oscars.

I Always Wanted To Make A Film That Had This Sort Of Chinese-box Effect, In Which You Keep Opening It Up And Opening It Up, And Finally At The End You're At The Beginning.

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.

A Panoramic Vision Of Bob Dylan, His Music, His Shifting Place In American Culture, From Multiple Angles. In Fact, Reading Sean Wilentz's Bob Dylan In America Is As Thrilling And Surprising As Listening To A Great Dylan Song.

I Grew Up Within Italian-american Neighborhoods, Everybody Was Coming Into The House All The Time, Kids Running Around, That Sort Of Stuff, So When I Finally Got Into My Own Area, So To Speak, To Make Films, I Still Carried On.

I'm Going To Be 60, And I'm Almost Used To Myself.

I Think If You Think Of Yourself As Religious And If You're Given A Gift, Some May Not Think It's That Great A Gift - Some Critics. But Others Might, You Know. So You Say, Look - Whether It's Good, Bad Or Indifferent, This Is What I Do.

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I Go Through Periods, Usually When I'm Editing And Shooting, Of Seeing Only Old Films.

Vic Armstrong Is, Of Course, A Legend

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Parts Of A Whole

There Are Movies That Change The Whole Way In Which Films Are Made, Like Klute, Where Gordon Willis’s Photography On The Film Is So Textured, And, They Said, Too Dark.

There Are Times When You Have To Face Your Enemies, Sit Down And Deal With It.

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I Have A Desire To Tell Stories. And I'm Never Quite Satisfied.

Oh, The Foghorns... Even The Foghorns, They're All Brass. It's Something By Ingrid Marshal Called Fog Tropes. It's Not A Sound Effect. It's An Actual Piece Of Music. If You Listen To What's Going On After He Has A Flashback About His Wife You'll Hear... It Sounds Like The Humpback Whales In A Way. But It's All Music. And We Use It Again Later, Too.

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I've Seen Many, Many Movies Over The Years, And There Are Only A Few That Suddenly Inspire You So Much That You Want To Continue To Make Films.

I Didn't Realize There Are Generations Who Do Not Know About The Origins Of Film.

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Orson Welles Was A Force Of Nature, Who Just Came In And Wiped The Slate Clean. And Citizen Kane Is The Greatest Risk-taking Of All Time In Film. I Don’t Think Anything Had Even Seen Anything Quite Like It. The Photography Was Also Unlike Anything We’d Seen. The Odd Coldness Of The Filmmaker Towards The Character Reflects His Own Egomania And Power, And Yet A Powerful Empathy For All Of Them--it’s Very Interesting. It Still Holds Up, And It’s Still Shocking. It Takes Storytelling And Throws It Up In The Air.

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That Subject Matter Has Never Left Me...the More You're In The Material World, The More There Is A Tendency For A Search For Serenity And A Need To Not Be Distracted By Physical Elements That Are Around You.

And So You Try Your Best. Sometimes You Go In With One Thing, With One Desire And Come Out With Something Else. In The Case Of 'the Aviator' It Was To Create A Hollywood Spectacle, But By About The Second Or Third Week Of Shooting You Just Want To Literally Survive It. Because Don't Forget, I Also Go Through The Editing Process Too, And When The Film Is Released I Have To Talk About It. So, I Take All Of That Very Seriously.

Film In The 20th Century, It's The American Art Form, Like Jazz.

I Wouldn't Presume To Be God's Point Of View.

I Happen To Like Vampires More Than Zombies.

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.

Sam Fuller And 'shock Corridor' Can Only Be Conjured As A Mantra. 'shock Corridor' Is A Classic Work Of Art - It's Unique. It Comes From The Unique Experience Of Being Sam Fuller And Yes, There's Always That Element Of 'shock Corridor' Hovering Around The Picture, But Never Specifically. In Fact, I Didn't Even Screen It Because It's In Us. It's In Me Anyway. It's In Me. It Was A Way Of Conjuring Up Support Just By Saying The Name, 'shock Corridor,' As I Was Going To Shoot. Poor Sam [fuller]...

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.

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.

When I Was Growing Up In The Mid-'50s, The Roaring Twenties Were A Huge Part Of The Culture. There Were A Number Of Films And A Bunch Of Television Shows That Dealt With The Mythology Of The Underworld From That Period.

Always Stay Open To Surprise.

The Real Truth, I Thought, In Terms Of What Faith Is And What Christianity Is.

One Of The Things Is That The Good Intentions Of Prohibition, From Reading Over The Years And From Becoming Obsessed With The Research Of Gangs In New York City, Seems To Have Allowed Crime Figures At The Time, Like Luciano, Capone, Torrio And Rothstein, To Organize To Become More Powerful, Which Pulled All The Way Through Until The '70s.

Very Often I've Known People Who Wouldn't Say A Word To Each Other, But They'd Go To See Movies Together And Experience Life That Way.

All I Can Do Is Try To Do The Best Work I Can. I Need To Work, I Like To Work... Although I Complain About It, But I Do Like It - And I Just Need To Make The Best Film I Can.

What The Dalai Lama Had To Resolve Was Whether To Stay In Tibet Or Leave. He Wanted To Stay, But Staying Would Have Meant The Total Destruction Of Tibet, Because He Would Have Died And That Would Have Ripped The Heart Out Of His People.

The Most Important Thing Is The Script.

As You Grow Older, You Change.

I Also Saw The Dalai Lama A Few Times.

We Cannot Burn Mick Jagger. We Want The Effect, But We Can't Burn Him.

Actually, I Was Rock Climbing On This Film At 7 In The Morning. It Was Quite Unique! But In Any Event, The Colour Of The Leaves Disturbed Me So We Had To Work On That. On The Other Hand, I Didn't Want To Drench It In A Kind Of Depressing Tone.

I Don't Really See A Conflict Between The Church And The Movies, The Sacred And The Profane...there Are Major Differences, But I Could Also See Great Similarities...both Are Places For People To Come Together And Share.

I Still Dislike Phones, Yeah!

I Do Know That Some Buddhists Are Able To Attain Peace Of Mind.

I'm Trying To Find Out What The Hell We - Who We Are.

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.

For Me, The Key Image Is The Boat Coming Through The Fog At The Beginning. It's Something I Imagined And Liked And I Guess There Are Other References In Other Films I Make - The Similar Type Of Image. But I Think It's Interesting, It's Breaking Through The Mystery, Or Maybe It Stays In The Fog... We Don't Really Know. Where Is He At The Beginning Of The Film, Who Is He?

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.

I Was Saying As A Joke The Other Day That I Love Film Editing, I Know How To Cut A Picture, I Think I Know How To Shoot It, But I Don't Know How To Light It. And I Realize It's Because I Didn't Grow Up With Light. I Grew Up In Tenements.

Well, I Think In My Own Work The Subject Matter Usually Deals With Characters I Know, Aspects Of Myself, Friends Of Mine - That Sort Of Thing.

Popular Music Formed The Soundtrack Of My Life.

It Is Not The Most Brilliant That Excel In Film, But The Most Patient!

The Storyboard For Me Is The Way To Visualise The Entire Movie In Advance.

You Gotta Understand, When Moving Images First Started, People Wanted Sound, Color, Big Screen And Depth.

The Vampire Thing Always Works For Some Reason. Always Works.

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On The One Hand, You're The Same Person, But As You Get Older, You Change Somewhat, And You Never Know How It's Going To Affect Your Work.

You've Got To Love Something Enough To Kill It.

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.'

There Is Something Particularly Unique About The Films Of Hong Sang-soo...it's Got To Do With His Masterful Sense Of Storytelling... As The Critic Manny Farber Once Said Of Hitchcock's Rope Hong Sang-soo's Pictures Unpeel Like An Orange.

I Always Say That I've Been In A Bad Mood For Maybe 35 Years Now. I Try To Lighten It Up, But That's What Comes Out When You Get Me On Camera.

I Was Born In 1942, So I Was Mainly Aware Of Howard Hughes' Name On Rko Radio Pictures.

Every Year Or So, I Try To Do Something; It Keeps Me Refreshed As To What's Going On In Front Of The Lens, And I Understand What The Actor Is Going Through.

The Bottom Line Is, I Tend To Be Going Back To Older And Older Music.

My Working-class Italian-american Parents Didn't Go To School, There Were No Books In The House.

I Accept All Awards. I Like Them.

Your Job Is To Get Your Audience To Care About Your Obsessions.

Being A Father At A Later Age Is Different From When I Had My Other Two Daughters When I Was In My 20s And 30s. If You're In Your 60s And You're With The Kid Every Day, You're Dealing With The Mind Of A Child, So It Opens Up That Childishness In You Again.

A Lot Of What I'm Obsessed With Is The Relationship And The Dynamics Between People And The Family, Particularly Brothers And Their Father.

I Think When You're Young And Have That First Burst Of Energy And Make Five Or Six Pictures In A Row That Tell The Stories Of All The Things In Life You Want To Say... Well, Maybe Those Are The Films That Should Have Won Me The Oscar.

I Prefer People Who Don't Get Caught, And If They Do Get Caught, I Prefer People Who Don't Give In.

I Was Rather Shaken By All The Green Trees. I Always Am. It Gets Me. I Don't Want To Be Funny About It But I Am. I Loved Seeing All The Westerns, But I Had Asthma And Couldn't Go Anywhere, But I Loved Watching Them In Technicolor And Seeing The Cowboys And The Landscapes Of Monument Valley And You'd See The Forests Of The Anthony Mann Films And Think, 'wow, That's Fantastic', But I Could Never Go There!

The Problem With Anger Is That It's So Consuming. You've Got To Take It Easy On Yourself At A Certain Point.

I Don't Like Being In Houses Alone.

Death Comes In A Flash, And That's The Truth Of It, The Person's Gone In Less Than 24 Frames Of Film.

I Think There's Only One Or Two Films Where I've Had All The Financial Support I Needed. All The Rest, I Wish I'd Had The Money To Shoot Another Ten Days.

Howard Hughes Was This Visionary Who Was Obsessed With Speed And Flying Like A God... I Loved His Idea Of What Filmmaking Was.

If Kubrick Had Lived To See The Opening Of His Final Film, He Obviously Would Have Been Disappointed By The Hostile Reactions. But I'm Sure That In The End He Would Have Taken It With A Grain Of Salt And Moved On. That's The Lot Of All True Visionaries, Who Don't See The Use Of Working In The Same Vein As Everyone Else. Artists Like Kubrick Have Minds Expansive And Dynamic Enough To Picture The World In Motion, To Comprehend Not Just Where Its Been, But Where It's Going.

I'm Not A Hollywood Director. I'm An In Spite Of Hollywood Director.

There Are Two Kinds Of Power You Have To Fight. The First Is The Money, And That's Just Our System. The Other Is The People Close Around You, Knowing When To Accept Their Criticism, Knowing When To Say No.

I Love Movies - It's My Whole Life, And That's It.

I Can't Really Envision A Time When I'm Not Shooting Something.

Watching A Kubrick Film Is Like Gazing Up At A Mountaintop. You Look Up And Wonder, How Could Anyone Have Climbed That High?

People Say You Should Do It This Way, Someone Else Suggests That, Yes, There's Financing, But Maybe You Should Use This Actor. And There Are The Threats, At The End - If You Don't Do It This Way, You'll Lose Your Box Office; If You Don't Do It That Way, You'll Never Get Financed Again... 35, 40 Years Of This, You Get Beat Up.

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I Don't Think There Is Any Difference Between Fantasy And Reality In The Way These Should Be Approached In A Film. Of Course If You Live That Way You Are Clinically Insane.

I Think What Happened There Was Just The Budget Would Be Too Big To Build These Sets Because Nothing Really Exists Here In New York Of That Period; You Have To Build It All.

My Father Had This Mythological Sense Of The Old New York, And He Used To Tell Me Stories About These Old Gangs, Particularly The Forty Thieves In The Fourth Ward.

It’s Often Overlooked. It’s Labor. That’s At The Heart Of #‎ Collaboration .

More Personal Films, You Could Make Them, But Your Budgets Would Be Cut Down.

If You’re Looking For The Origins Of Film Culture In America, Look No Further Than Amos Vogel.

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.

I Wish I Could Play Music. I Think I Get As Closeas Possible With The Editing Of The Films. Over The Years Musichas Been An Even More Important Influence Than-or As Important As-film.there's No Doubt About It. Painting, Movement, Dance, Sculpture-it'sall In Cinema.

I Don't Know How Else To Tell The Story Except To Utilise That Vocabulary: The Rain, The Darkness, The Mansions, The Framing, Etc, The Lighting And That Sort Of Thing.

If You Don’t Like The Films Of Samuel Fuller , Then You Just Don’t Like Cinema.

Mean Streets Dealt With The American Dream, According To Which Everybody Thinks They Can Get Rich Quick, And If They Can't Do It By Legal Means Then They'll Do It By Illegal Ones.

And As I've Gotten Older, I've Had More Of A Tendency To Look For People Who Live By Kindness, Tolerance, Compassion, A Gentler Way Of Looking At Things.

There's A Way That The Force Of Disappointment Can Be Alchemized Into Something That Will Paradoxically Renew You.

The Only Thing I Really Wanted Was The Freedom To Be Able To Get What I Want On Film. I’ve Dealt With The Mpaa Since 1973, So I Know How To Renegotiate And Rework.

I Know There Were Many Good Policemen Who Died Doing Their Duty. Some Of The Cops Were Even Friends Of Ours. But A Cop Can Go Both Ways.

It Did Remind Me Of Something Out Of Greek Mythology - The Richest King Who Gets Everything He Wants, But Ultimately His Family Has A Curse On It From The Gods.

All My Life, I Never Really Felt Comfortable Anywhere In New York, Except Maybe In An Apartment Somewhere.

I Loved The Idea Of Seeing The World Through A Boy's Eyes.

I'd Like To Do A Number Of Films. Westerns. Genre Pieces. Maybe Another Film About Italian Americans Where They're Not Gangsters, Just To Prove That Not All Italians Are Gangsters.

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.

Pursuit Of Happiness

There Was Always A Part Of Me That Wanted To Be An Old-time Director. But I Couldn't Do That. I'm Not A Pro.

If I'm Not Complaining, I'm Not Having A Good Time, Hah Hah!

Having A Good Time

I Love Studying Ancient History And Seeing How Empires Rise And Fall, Sowing The Seeds Of Their Own Destruction.

If We Just Sit And Exist, And Understand That, I Think It Will Be Helpful In A World That Seems Like A Record That's Going Faster And Faster, We're Spinning Off The Edge Of The Universe.

Our World Is So Glutted With Useless Information, Images, Useless Images, Sounds, All This Sort Of Thing. It's A Cacophony, It's Like A Madness I Think That's Been Happening In The Past Twenty-five Years. And I Think Anything That Can Help A Person Sit In A Room Alone And Not Worry About It Is Good.

Music And Film Are Inseparable. They Always Have Been And Always Will Be.

Could You Double-check The Envelope?

During Prohibition, Atlantic City Created The Idea Of The Speakeasy, Which Turned Into Nightclubs And That Extraordinary Political Complexity And Corruption Coming Out Of New Jersey At The Time. The Long Hand That They Had-and Maybe Still Do-even Had To Do With Presidential Elections.

I Think All The Great Studio Filmmakers Are Dead Or No Longer Working. I Don't Put Myself, My Friends, And Other Contemporary Filmmakers In Their Category. I Just See Us Doing Some Work.

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.

There Must Be People Who Remember World War Ii And The Holocaust Who Can Help Us Get Out Of This Rut.

I Certainly Wasn't Able To Get It When I Was A Kid Growing Up On The Lower East Side; It Was Very Hard At That Time For Me To Balance What I Really Believed Was The Right Way To Live With The Violence I Saw All Around Me - I Saw Too Much Of It Among The People I Knew.

It’s Also True That I Might Have Never Made Taxi Driver [1976] Were It Not For The Success Of Alice [doesn’t Live Here Anymore, 1974]. The Question Of Commercialism Is A Source Of Worry. Must One Make A Choice, Must It Be A Matter Of Either Setting Your Sights On Winning An Academy Award And Becoming A Millionaire, Or Making Only The Movies You Want To Make And Starving To Death?

Vertigo Is Probably My Favourite Hitchcock Film And Probably One Of My Favourite Films Of All Time. It's A Film That I'm Obsessed With. I Saw It On Its First Release In Vista Vision, Projected In Vista-vision, At The Capitol Theatre In New York. That Moment When The Nun Comes Up In The End... It's Just An Extraordinary Shot.

If Your Mother Cooks Italian Food, Why Should You Go To A Restaurant?

Sometimes When You're Heavy Into The Shooting Or Editing Of A Picture, You Get To The Point Where You Don't Know If You Could Ever Do It Again.

[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.

Now More Than Ever We Need To Talk To Each Other, To Listen To Each Other And Understand How We See The World, And Cinema Is The Best Medium For Doing This.

Young Film Makers Should Learn How To Deal With The Money And Learn How To Deal With The Power Structure. Because It Is Like A Battle.

The Cinema Began With A Passionate, Physical Relationship Between Celluloid And The Artists And Craftsmen And Technicians Who Handled It, Manipulated It, And Came To Know It The Way A Lover Comes To Know Every Inch Of The Body Of The Beloved. No Matter Where The Cinema Goes, We Cannot Afford To Lose Sight Of Its Beginnings.

The Five Points Was The Toughest Street Corner In The World. That's How It Was Known. In Fact, Charles Dickens Visited It In The 1850s And He Said It Was Worse Than Anything He'd Seen In The East End Of London.

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