John Waters Quotes

Movies will end up being this esoteric art form, where only singular people will put films out in a small group of theaters.

When I came to New York in 1949, there was already an entire fresh avant-garde film movement blooming in New York and California. It was a very, very exciting period!

I don't think American independent films have ever really been particularly experimental, except for the original guys from the '60s who were huge influences, like Stan Brakhage, Robert Breer, and Stan van der Beek. They were the true independents.

Ulrik Ottinger was the most real and experimental of all the German New Wave directors. She was probably the most out-there, too. She's a fascinating artist in that world.

I went to film school, and I came in when video art was king, weird stuff was king, and there, you don't have a script as your bible.

I think it would be great to make a $2 million or $3 million art movie where nobody would really have to go to it. I thought that would be a good project to work on . . . do something really artistic.

You definitely want to do the little films. They're always going to be harder, but you don't do them to make money. You do them so you can see what you can make with the research that you have.

My mother did movies from the New Wave, but I was quite shocked I didn't know much about that period. Bernado showed us film of the demonstrations of the time.

They seem much rarer now, those auteur films that come out of a director's imagination and are elliptical and hermetic. All those films that got me into independent cinema when I was watching it seem thin on the ground.

I didn't have any ambition to produce big mainstream popcorn movies.

In the early '90s, when those little art films started coming out, we were introduced to Quentin Tarantino and guys like that, and independent cinema was something that everyone wanted to be a part of.

I had originally done a production called 'The Resistance.' It was one of those underground guerilla things, very low budget. Then Starz and Ghost House ended up picking it up and funding it, and we reshot it.

If you make a film normally it's all right, the distributors are helpful and cooperative. But if you make a film that's a little stange, a little bizarre, then all the time it's a struggle with them.

It's hard to get a film, you know, you need a very special film to be able to get that experimental. But, I would love to see that happen. I would love the opportunity to be more experimental than I am.

I was a young film student around the time of the new wave in film in the 1970s; old Hollywood was naff and over. For me, as a film student, I was going to see French and Italian cinema; American cinema was 'Easy Rider' and 'Taxi Driver.' Everything was gritty.

I was making a lot of independent movies before the independent movement.

I'm not an especially highbrow person, but I have always loved small, quirky, edgy movies.

I think I might like to try film again just as an experiment, but I know that I could never do the mainstream thing again.

I think you do independent movies because you're looking to cut away from commercial movies.

You gotta understand, 'Swingers' was a resume film for me. I never thought anybody would see the movie who I wasn't in the room with showing it to them.

I definitely think independent film is very exciting, and you get to sometimes take bigger risks. So that's always a challenge and something that I look forward to.

Jacques Audiard has always been an outlier in a French film industry that is starkly bifurcated between high and low.

I don't think 'Road' is an experimental film.

We are moving into a phase where what was once alternative cinema is becoming mainstream. I like being in that space.

I've always liked the idea of merging esoteric art cinema with down-and-dirty exploitation films.