David MacKenzie Quotes

I have as much artistic freedom in my television work as I have in my films.

I just want to make films that have enough of a budget to pull off high-level imagery but also have a budget that is low enough that I can do what I want.

I think it's the same thing for a country. We are lucky then that we can get some financing from the government, because it means when I get the money, when I get the grant to do the film, of course it's based on the script, but I have total artistic control and I can do personal stuff.

When I did TV shows and my other movies, I never try to do it for anybody. I just do what I think is good no matter what the genre is.

Writers do the self-censoring before they even get to the studio executive, because they know the film will not run that gauntlet. They, because they want to get their films made, they censor it.

If I can make the movies I want, people are going to watch it how they're going to watch it.

The audience is not your boss. They are your collaborators and when you collaborate with someone you don't have to listen to everything they think or say.

Now I'm taking some classes, I'm going to school for film, and I think I'm going to end up back in the industry in one capacity or another. I'm not sure where just yet. I kind of stepped away from it for a few years. I thought I was done with it. But I grew up in it. It's such a big part of my life.

As a first-time director, you cannot have final cut. But as a producer, you can have final cut.

It started off for me as just wanting to be an actor and sort of resenting in a weird way being expected to write as well as be a comedian and an improviser. And then you think about it for a minute, and I smartened up and realized that the only way to sustain a career is to generate your own material. Or to be in control of your career as best you can. And in allowing yourself to do that it opens up a whole new world of possibilities. And then you're like "Oh, producing is a thing."

Robert Rodriguez, makes a feature film in 35mm celluloid one and a half hours long, and nobody believed him, I think he wrote a book about it and gave all the details of how he spent the money, even making a 35mm celluloid feature film was possible, at least for Rodriguez.

There was a time when I first started that there was such a thing called 'a woman's film' and there were certain scripts that women would make. But I think that's changed a lot now. I think that if a woman director walks into a room with a script, it doesn't really matter what the subject matter is, or the genre is, so long as the financers feel that the woman has the skills to make the film.

I never had a movie that I wanted to do turned down in my whole life. I always write the script first so it speaks for itself.

It seemed like there were so many options in filmmaking before. If they don't want to make it, well okay, there's a hundred other places we can try. I'm not a producer and I don't even know the places my producer goes to, thankfully. But I think there are far fewer options now to releasing a movie theatrically or to getting the financing.

It's an all-inclusive package, when you get to be creative and run a little country while you're on a set and doing it with people that you enjoy working with and you all have a say in it.

I do love making films. I want to be a filmmaker that grows and progresses and does keep trying to push myself. I think that's it... and a bit of confidence maybe.

Directing a movie precludes me from being involved in any greater way. But, the job was never to do more, it was always to enable. Sometimes as a producer, you're creating and writing it, or sometimes you're writing and directing it, or other times you're there from the very beginning.

I want to do more independent film. I'm blessed to be working on really quality episodic television, which to me actually feels like a sort of 13-hour film.

I think when you're trying to get a film together that's had a long gustation process before I came on board and was trying to get financed in various stages, sometimes you're trying to make it more friendly to the financial interests or the commercial interests of various parties.

If you want to do a film, steal a camera, steal raw stock, sneak into a lab and do it!

I never watched a frame of the film until it was finished.

When you start on a new film, no matter how many you've done before that, I think I've done close to 80 films, but it's always kind of a fun adventure.

I'd love to direct, and I think I'd be a great director, but... I've been approved by the studio to direct, which I think is a cool jump of faith for them. Or proof that they're really stupid. But I don't think so.

I'm doing my best. I read in the paper that I'm an action director. They always say that, "Action director Walter Hill", if they bother writing about me at all. I think that's fine. I'm happy to do the work.

When filmmakers are kept from making films, there's a lot of different reasons why. Sometimes you work on a film and cast it and do all the work and can be just a month away from shooting, and all of a sudden, the whole thing goes up in smoke. But I do think the advent of a digital revolution is going to provide people with opportunities to make films that they never would have had before. I think you can do some pretty credible stuff now with very, very little money. Which I think is great for young filmmakers.