Jason Reitman Quotes

Not all of our movies work, but we take shots, and we're able to do that because we really stick to low budgets.

Movies are not an art form where you get to kind of sit in your art gallery and paint, you know? You don't do that. You're spending a lot of somebody else's money.

If you're a producer, you always spend too much money because you want that shot - and you're willing to spend a bundle to get it.

In America, they shoot budgets and schedules, and they don't shoot films any more. There's more opportunity in Europe to make films that at least have a purity of intent.

My partner, Beth Alexander, and I want to produce smaller films, but commercially viable films that will enable me to make the kinds of movies I want to make.

With directing, you always have three or four things constantly on the go. It's a tough industry and a tough time, particularly if you're doing things a little outside the box or independent features.

On Lock, Stock, we didn't know where the money for shooting the next day was coming from.

I don't make movies because I think audiences will want to go see them.

I believe in making movies very inexpensively; I think that way too much money is spent on making movies. Enough movies are being made, but not enough experimental ones.

Any idiot can make money. Keeping money, very few can do.

My opinion is just be very careful when you're young and making the money.

That's the biggest rule in Hollywood: Don't spend your own money.

You end up giving up half your salary every time you make a movie because you need the money to make the movie you have in your head.

I want to make my own movie.

I'm used to doing big undertakings with my own money.

As a director, my job is to spend money, and the producer's is to save money. Masoom, Bandit Queen and the first Queen Elizabeth have been my most uncompromised films.

There is no free lunch, so if you're playing with the big train set - on big movies - it's a lot of money they're entrusting you with, and you have to get that money back for them. I don't take that responsibility lightly.

The only way to meet the situation [the financial crisis] is spend less money and to run the City of New York within the limits of our resources. Unless you do this, gentlemen, you will have a difficult problem confronting you by the end of this year and the taxpayers of 1922 and the years thereafter will have to pay the price of our present lack of prudence or our unwillingness to economize at the proper time.

Most people who've had a big hit movie like 'Paranormal Activity,' the next thing they say is, 'I want to make a $100 million movie.' I have no interest in making more expensive movies.

There's a long history of people who spent that $300,000 on their first film and weren't quite ready, and then they never did it again 'cause they were out of synch with where they were, and they would never raise that money again.

I would never make a film because I think it's going to be a box-office success.

When you keep things responsible and manageable, you can make some interesting movies that you maybe couldn't make otherwise.

As long as your movies don't lose money, you'll always be able to make them.

That is one of the sides of Los Angeles that I really like as people may have their big careers but there is one side to Hollywood that is always open to taking risks - as long as it doesn't include risking too much money.

The only chance for a guy like me is to make a decent picture for a reasonable budget. If it brings in a profit for investors, maybe I'll have the opportunity to make something else.