Elvis Mitchell Quotes

I don't approach films purely in context of genre.

I want my movies to be audience experiences. As much as I like Michael Haneke, I'm not going to make a Haneke film. That's just not in my DNA.

There is often a great disparity between a director's personal style and the movies he makes.

With 'Mask,' 'Smooth Talk' and 'Blue Velvet,' I loved the specific experiences so much. Each one was a specific filmmaker with a specific vision.

'Barton Fink' owed something to Roman Polanski. As a director, he always goes beyond the obvious narrative drift.

You can't make a film for your personal satisfaction. That is why I detest the cinema of people like Mani Kaul.

What I like to do with every film is to bring a form, like a cinematographic proposal. If you watch 'S21,' it's a form; 'Duch, Master of the Gates of Hell' is a different proposal.

In all my films, I have tried a different look.

I knew Spike Jonze would do something really interesting with it.

I really wanted to write the way Kubrick makes films - 'Strangelove,' '2001', 'Clockwork Orange', 'Barry Lyndon' - they're all so different.

I mean, '8½' to me is such a great dissertation on the whole, you know, act of filmmaking and creativity.

Agnes Varda changed my view of cinema; she directs from an artistic point of view, and a film is most of all the expression of an artistic director. I learnt to enter the world and the imagination of a director.

Peter Chelsom and Edgar Wright are totally different directors and worlds apart, but both really accomplished directors who are certain of how they want to make a film.

I think every movie is its own little world, and a director certainly sets the tone.

The director's very important to me, particularly when the director has a recognizable style.

I'm very attracted to directors who want to experiment. The thing that attracts me the most are people who are trying find a language that is correct for their film, for that specific film.

Baz Luhrmann is a very visual director. He needs to see things as they would unfold in his world.

Cinema is a creative medium. The director has the right to express.

My favorite filmmakers are in the Kubrick, Polanski kind of mold. I just like that world. I think it's more cinematic and gets under your skin more.

An epic is the canvas Brian DePalma paints on.

Every director has his own syntax, his own grammar, his own words.

I think of myself as a cultural filmmaker.

I love movies where you can tell who's directed it even before the credits roll in, like Wes Anderson or Quentin Tarantino. People who make very stylized types of film.

I do believe that there are auteurs, in the sense that there are filmmakers with very strong voices and their voices are communicated on to the screen without a lot of compromise.

My responsibility is to make a film and find my dramatic language; I don't have any political or social responsibility.