Curtis Hanson Quotes

The reason I took Early Edition - besides the fact that I liked it - was that it enabled me to start a production company in New York City. It's a low-budget film company to produce and direct movies.

I didn't go to film school. I got my education on the set as a niche publicist in the film industry.

I grew up thinking there was something called 'independent film,' which I wouldn't necessarily have had access to if there wasn't Sundance.

You can take your life into your own hands in terms of directing. There are ways for you to finance yourself and to write and make a film.

Before I made 'Sweetback,' I had a three-picture deal with Columbia and enough juice, if I was real clever with it, to proclaim that I wanted to do an independent film.

If you really spend time with movies, it's three years of your life from beginning to end. I started out planting the seed with 'Monster's Ball' about independent cinema and raising money and that whole thing as a producer, and then it becomes easier for me.

With 'House Party 4,' I did it with my own money, and I sold it to New Line.

Definition of an independent film is torture with less money and time.

I've never done a studio movie, let alone worked for a network. Every one of my films has been independently financed.

The movie industry has collapsed into two types of film - the $100 million blockbuster or the small independent film of $1 million or less - and the huge middle ground has been lost. Cable is filling that void.

If you want to make movies you need to think on a micro-micro level and figure out how to make them for nothing with people who really care about your movie and really want to make it.

When we did Wayne's World, it was 14 million dollars and they didn't bug us too much because they just thought it was some little movie that nobody was ever going to see. We showed them.

The traditional Hollywood system is pretty rigid, but the film scene in, say, South Africa is booming with a lot of possibilities. If you have the cameras and reasonable capital, you can put your film in theatres next to 'Guardians of the Galaxy.' A great example of that was Kagiso Lediga's film 'Blitz Patrole.'

It's almost an impossible thing to get a movie made that is written by two actors who want to star in it, when no one knows who they are. The only time it happened that I know of was when Sylvester Stallone did it in 'Rocky.'

When you make a movie independently, you raise the money beforehand, and then you make the movie kind of by yourself.

My dream is just to make zero-budget movies for the rest of my life, because I love that environment.

Ironically, it's easier to raise the money to make the film than it is to have the film find wide distribution.

I met Jill Soloway at Sundance a couple years ago. I was there for 'Crystal Fairy', and she was there for 'Afternoon Delight'. She reached out and wanted to get together.

The film division at Amazon is made up of true cineastes who love movies and really want to try and provide opportunity for independent film visions to find their footing in a vastly shifting market. They love cinema.

I bow down to the altar of genre, because it allowed me to get 'The Witch' financed.

I think, in general, independents don't have a lot of access to really good scriptwriters or actors or actresses, so they're very limited in what they can do.

After the blockbuster 'Magadheera,' I made a film with comedian Sunil as the hero. If I am interested in making a film - big or small - I will go ahead and make it.

When you're making an independent feature, there are so many difficult stages. One, just writing the script is difficult on its own. Then, when you get it to a place where you're happy with it, great - but then you need to find persons who are willing to produce it, who like the script.

After I made my first short film that wasn't terrible, people were interested in potentially developing a feature with me. Every time I read a script, it was a bizarre, too-dark, genre-less thing that no one wanted to make.

I feel that if you want to make films, you have to be willing to make it without a fee. You get a deferment, I guess.