Robert Towne Quotes

The reason I took on directing a film myself was because, no matter how skilful a director was or how much I liked the film, there'd always be beats where I'd go, 'Oh... well, that's skilful, in a way, but it doesn't get the flavour I'd intended in the script.'

Every film I try and make it the way I see it in my head, and it really just depends on the script and the people I'm working with or whatever interests me at that particular time.

Sometimes you see things in a script, and it doesn't necessarily mean the director sees the same things. And if you think you're going to be making a different film, then that's not gonna work.

The moment that you start to read a script, you're watching the movie in your mind, and that's the one moment that you have. Then, you go off to make the movie and you become so lost in it.

As a director and filmmaker, I love creating my own opportunity, and getting to share the love, in that way, by creating other opportunities for people that I admire, so that they can do something in a way they haven't done it before.

If I were doing somebody else's script or I adapted a book by Philip Roth, on set there could be a million different interpretations of the material and people could argue with me. Certainly on Synecdoche, New York we had discussions and arguments, but I felt like I had authority because I'm a writer.

I tend not to work with a specific person in mind. Art is a matter of statistics. It's not about individuals. It's about people.

I'm just glad that on a budget like this I don't have to make any of those hard decisions because I feel it must be a real job to direct this, as there's so much going on.

People seem to think that my movies are so carefully coordinated and arranged - and in a lot of ways, they are - but every single time I make a movie, I feel that every director makes these choices. You make choices about your script, you make choices about your actors, and how you're going to stage it, and how you're going to shoot it, and what the costumes are going to be like, and in every single detail, you make that decision. And for me, what ends up happening is, I wind up surprised at the combination of all these ingredients. It never is anything like what I expected.

It sounds kind of flighty, filmmaker-y, but I believe films are a piece of art. They are meant to be what they're meant to be, and sometimes the artist is informed by the film of what it needs to be.

You get a script and you love it. You find a director that you trust, and it becomes all about how do I commit to this as fully as possible? And the last thing you can afford to have in your mind is what are other people going to think of this?

Those of us who make films try to make something that we're feeling and that we would like. Then we just hope an audience responds the same way. It's very important to have the electrical circuit made, but I don't have control over how people feel when they flip the switch. So the whole idea of marketing research and test screenings is just foreign to me.

I long ago learned that you can't expect people to interpret the songs in the way they had meant for you, as the writer.

I don't think I'd be a good director because people would ask me, you know, "What is it? What's going on here? Where should I put the camera?" Or, "What's my motivation?" And I would say, "Do whatever you want!"

People say, "How do you get into the British film industry?" There is no British film industry, there are just people making films and finding their own way. It's not like in the States where there are studios and there's an actual infrastructure to it; there's just nothing here. You make it from scratch a lot of the time.

I prefer directing to acting. There is huge freedom that comes from being behind the camera. It brings a lot of responsibilities as well, but is intensely rewarding. Particularly the chance to help draw out the best in young actors.

I consider myself a lyricist first and foremost, but if you get something else out of what I do, that's fine too. I'm not sitting back here telling people how they have to take my stuff. We just want to play music, and hope that people like it.

I still to this day maintain that in that million-and-a-half feet of film [Heaven's Gate] that we shot, we thought we were making a great American film. I honestly believe that Michael [Cimino] was under a tremendous amount of pressure, and Michael's response to pressure from what I saw was to double down and to get more aggressive and to get more kind of arrogant, but I don't think it was real. I think it was the response to pressure.

People will say things after a screening that it affects them in a certain way, which is why I don't like to explain what certain things are about. I want them to have that. It limits people's ability to understand something if I say it's "about this." That's happened to us a bunch on this.

The mind can make substance, and people planets of its own with beings brighter than have been, and give a breath to forms which can outlive all flesh.

I'm enough of an anarchist aesthetically, when it comes to art - I want people to be reading my stuff voluntarily. They should be doing it because they want to.

I'm not presumptuous enough to feel that people are going to feel what I have in mind, so I tell a story, you know, let them read something, that doesn't change, that as I have said it, you know, so that's the way I feel about the viewer, the viewer has a mind of their own and eyes of their own and they're going to see it their way, I just hope they look.

I thought it [Star Wars] was too wacky for the general public. Right or wrong this is my movie, this is my decision, and this is my creative vision, and if people don't like it, they don't have to see it.

When you direct is the only time you get to have the world exactly how you want it. My movies are very close to what I set out to do. And I'm super-opinionated about what I do and don't like.

The director makes the movie. The director has to have the story in their head, has to know the style of the piece, has to answer questions from actors, design, set, lighting, every department throughout the pre-production, production, and post-production, because they've got it in their mind. They've got to know exactly what they want and what the style and story of the movie is. It's them. They make it.