My films play only in Bengal, and my audience is the educated middle class in the cities and small towns. They also play in Bombay, Madras and Delhi where there is a Bengali population.
You can always make a film somehow. You can beg, borrow, steal the equipment, use credit cards, use your friends' goodwill, wheedle your way into this or that situation. The real problem is, how do you get people to see it once it is made?
I wanted to make a film as an artist, and it's going to have to find an audience, you know. I don't know how big the audience will be.
A film is between you and the audience. The distributors are the only people in between us. It is a straight equation.
When you're on a film and you're doubting something, it's usually because you don't think the audience is going to like it.
I was also told some years ago that I shouldn't 'waste my time' with female-centric films because the audience was not ready for it.
No saint, no pope, no general, no sultan, has ever had the power that a filmmaker has; the power to talk to hundreds of millions of people for two hours in the dark.
My greatest debt will always be to the movie-going public of yesterday and today, without whose love and devotion I would have had no story to tell.
To get audiences to go see a film is a completely separate issue.
Film is a medium where the audience gives you 100 per cent.
A big blockbuster like 'Kick' expands the audience for my films and makes it easier to promote them.
The multiplexes audience has one way of thinking. When they are all sitting together temperamentally, there is room for a filmmaker to reach out to a far larger audience in a comfortable way.
Hong Kong film audiences are very quiet. It's their culture.
Young audience, in the age group of 16-33 years, constitutes the main viewership of Bollywood films.
If you've been fortunate enough to do a film that appeals to the entire family, that's the audience that's probably going to come back to you in something else.
It seems like movies that have heart to them always do well, and they find their audience.
If I'm able to catch the screening, there's a point in the film where, like clockwork, a portion of the audience gets really emotional and begins to cry. And that's very difficult to make happen.
I can pick up a screenplay and flip through the pages. If all I see is dialog, dialog, dialog, I won't even read it. I don't care how good the dialog is - it's a moving picture. It has to move all the time... It's not the stage. A movie audience doesn't have the patience to sit and learn a lesson. Their eyes need to be dazzled. The writer is the most important element in the entire film because if it ain't on the page it ain't going to be on the screen.
Cinemas gained new young audiences who wanted films made for them.
It's nice to be part of a film that will be watched by a large audience.
When 'Pizza' released, I was a nobody. Initially, we managed to get only 100 screens. But, after its success, the producers of 'Naduvula Konjam Pakkatha Kaanom' got 150 screens and also released the film in the U.S. Now, distributors are keen to invest in my films because they feel I have face value.
I think there's a whole older generation that will go to movies still. People like me; people over 45.
On the outside, America looks like this great melting pot, but on the inside, there's this segregation in American cinema. Why does a Latino film have to be for Latinos? Why is a black film just for black people? Why?
I think there's still an appetite among a certain audience to see intelligent movies that have real emotion in them.
People are always telling me that boys won't go to girls' movies and vice versa. It's not true.
