Werner Herzog Quotes

I don't know what it was, maybe the movie theaters in my immediate surrounding neighbourhood in Burbank, but I never saw what would be considered A movies.

The Oscars are about the dynamics of that moment, of that season. It reflects what's been going on in the world every year through the movies. And a lot of times, what's popular at the movies is popular because of what's going on in the world at that moment.

Cinema is changing every week, and multiplex audiences are demanding every week.

I like L.A., but I think what's changed is that the kinds of films I do, the mid-range dramatic film, has become an endangered species.

Danish film is spreading in a fantastic way.

There are no rebels in the cinema business.

Entertainment, really, is a dying industry.

The fact is, it's hard to release movies.

The business has changed, and some people can keep talking about theatrical in these wondrous terms - it will survive, but it becomes narrower what you can make. So the films I'm most interested in, studios - or even the independents - aren't making them. I'm mostly interested in people.

Movies cater to what the audiences want.

Everybody's been decrying the death of movie theaters for decades and, you know, people are still going to the movies in droves. It's gone down, but it hasn't gone down that much. I think the biggest change has been the emergence of cable and streaming on television. That has really had a dramatic effect, and I think it's a positive one. I think there's really good work going on there, and as movies stratify to being these gigantic tentpole movies, and small movies, I think it gives another outlet for character-driven material.

You do these movies, you give it out to the world and you really have no idea how people are going to react to you.

MGM bores me when I see them, but I don't see them much. They have been a help in getting me introductions to morticians, who are the only people worth knowing.

I think most of the time with independent films, you don't know where it's gonna end up. I've done a number of films that may never see the light of day, so it ends up being exclusively about the content, material, the characters and the story. Things that you maybe wouldn't get an opportunity to do otherwise. So, as an actor, obviously it's so different.

For the most part Hollywood is a world of imagination.

I don't see a lot of studio executives caring at all about what the culture is telling us. They think they make the culture. They're not out taking the temperature of things and using the results of whatever sort of cultural surveying they're doing to make movies. They're interested in doing things that people are already comfortable with, and taking those properties and filling them.

When you make movies, you've picked the most expensive art form, and somebody has to pay for it. You kind of owe it to them to at least let them know how you expect to make it as accessible to as many people as you can, given the story you're telling.

Mel Gibson's father doesn't think there was a Holocaust? Great. I don't think there's a movie. We're even.

I'd be fine if there weren't film festivals, and you just made your films and didn't have to do anything from that point on. That would be really great, wouldn't it? I don't know. I'm in kind of an aloof time, where I'm not taking anything too seriously.

I don't really enjoy working in TV, to be completely honest, even though it's incredibly lucrative, I'm just terrified of not being satiated in a myriad of different ways. It's amazing that I get to create every day, as an actor, or a director, or a writer, and I get to do it in a variety of different genres and worlds and characterizations. I think that's the great privilege of what we do, we get to make believe. I get to go to so many different places, try on different occupations, take on different points of view. That's what's always been sort of alluring.

The saving grace of the cinema is that with patience, and a little love, we may arrive at that wonderfully complex creature which is called man.

I've always thought of the audience. I just want to entertain the audience. That's what it's about: what's good for the movie, what's best for the movie, what's best for the audience.

I make movies. I'm not in politics.

Whatever field you can do that, that's where you want to do it, and I think that's why people like David Fincher and Ridley Scott are interested in it, too, because when you sit down on a meeting in HBO and they're like, "More, more." You're just like, "Oh yeah, I love this." Sometimes it's a little harder in film. I think also it's a great audience, take advantage of it. It's a great audience.

Television allows you to actually make a living, feed your children, send them to college and important significant things. To have the ability, the luxury, to make the choices of doing little movies where people cannot pay you.