Peter Greenaway Quotes

The technology is really where all of the changes have taken place, but the fundamentals of a good story being the basis of every good picture, and really the only basis still remains the rule, more so today, I think, because we've unfortunately weaned an audience from birth to kind of mindless movies.

I don't believe moviegoers don't have patience. Screenwriters are told a scene can't be longer than three minutes, that you have to cut to the chase. Not true!

It's quite amazing what 3D is doing to movies. Just simple things like a paper plane flying at you or flower petals fluttering about are wonderful.

I've seen some of James Cameron's work, and I've got to go 3D.

The wonderful thing about cinema is you can bring a 3D world to life.

I think as storytelling has changed, you know, it's kind of turned into kind of hyper-reality movies.

As a storyteller, when you're writing a movie and when you're directing, you want to keep people entertained. That's the whole point, right? It has to be entertaining.

A good film script should be able to do completely without dialogue.

I think that those are the things that you can uniquely do with film that are difficult to do anywhere else: they can bring a picture to life, give it a natural and historical context and make you feel that everything else is suddenly credible.

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.

My interpretation of a strong director is someone who knows their story. That's what directors are, they're storytellers because they're directing where your focus is going to be as an audience.

You can be far more challenging, articulate and intelligent writing for television than you can writing for the cinema.

Our cinema has evolved in last 60 years because we have made people happy through our films. The main purpose of our storyline is to spread happiness. Our cinema has an emotional connect.

Film is so immersive.

What I've realized is that a film operates both on the intellectual and emotional levels, and if you can find a way to tell a riveting story and draw ideas out of that, it's very powerful.

Network television is all talk. I think there should be visuals on a show, some sense of mystery to it, connections that don't add up.

I have nothing against 3-D in theory. But I've also never run to the movies because something's in 3-D.

The more I make films, the more I feel less inclined to talk about them and just let people watch them. I feel that the pictures are telling the story, and I can't really add anything except just talking about the technicalities of what happened on the day.

To be honest, I found the 3D in 'Avatar' to be inconsistent and while ground breaking in many respects, sometimes I thought it overwhelmed the storytelling. Technology aside, I wish 'Avatar' had been more original in its storytelling.

I don't particularly enjoy watching films in 3D because I think that a well-shot and well-projected film has a very three-dimensional quality to it, so I'm somewhat sceptical of the technology.

I think movies have much more magic than the theater. Theater can be a magical experience, but movies thrust their subjectivity on you in a more profound way.

You can be a smarty-pants director, but that won't matter if the movie doesn't work emotionally as well as intellectually.

TV and film taught me to think cinematically. Teaching others to edit, for example, provides a great deal of insight into the millions of ways in which given elements can be put together to tell a story.

'Rocket Science' is really where I fell in love with filmmaking, I think 'Camp' was incredible, but it was so bizarre, and I was trying to find my footing in this world where you don't have an audience for immediate validation.

The beauty of cinema is that it can do some things that novels just can't.