There's always a concern over budget with film too but people are more extravagant when they're making a feature. In television everything's tight, everything's paired down and it's just a question of making it look expensive.
Bigger-budgeted films have more restrictions and less freedom to create. Because of this, I try to find freedom in the people I work with. I often work in ways I don't want to. It's more about controlling the situation. Lower-budget films are freer.
In the '80s, I can't say that Amy and I were aware of an independent film community. We could only get a certain amount of money for our pictures, which made them low budget movies, but they were distributed through studios.
I don't see a big difference between the job of directing a low-budget movie and the job of directing a big-budget movie.
Comedies are just never that expensive quite frankly. They really aren't. We aren't doing green screen shooting, so even Hangover II in Bangkok might seem like it's expensive, you're flying over and back, but they're just not that expensive to make when you do it the way we do it which is very focused and I've done it before.
Newlyweds shooting budget: 5k for actors, 2k insurance, 2k food and drink. 9k in the can. We only shot 12 days. That's how to make an independent film.
It's too expensive, that's the thing nobody wants to talk about. It is too expensive to make movies. That's not true, it is too expensive to market movies. Making movies is not.
'Tangerine' was less than half the budget of 'Starlet,' and 'Starlet' was already a microbudget film. A director always wants more time, and we had a limited amount of resources.
For 'Filth,' we had about 12 producers on the thing. The opening credits go on for months. Most of them are actually financers rather than producers. And the only way that we could raise the budget without interference from a studio was to have a lot of different financers on board.
You don't have to spend $200 million or $100 million to make a great movie.
Why has Scandinavia been producing such good thrillers? Maybe because their filmmakers can't afford millions for CGI and must rely on cheaper elements like, you know, stories and characters.
This film cost $31 million. With that kind of money I could have invaded some country.
If you look at 'Avatar,' could you imagine if you did 'Avatar' for 50 million dollars? It would be ridiculous! You would almost be getting laughs from the audience, unless you got a real indie director to do something incredibly stylised.
My low-budget films, more than anything, taught me that you've got to create cool, likable characters and great stories because, if you don't, it doesn't matter how cool it might look - no one is going to care about it.
I never wanted to or expected to make a film outside of New York. New York became very, very expensive. The same $18 million spent in Barcelona or Rome goes much further there.
I would rather be attached to well-made, big-budget films.
The size of the budget doesn't make that much of a difference because the kind of issues I have on a low budget film I I have on a big budget film as well, but they're just much bigger.
Film is a very expensive medium.
The only difference from one $100 million budget film to another is which of the 12 box stars are getting $20 million to be in it.
God help me if I ever do another movie with an explosion in it. If you see me in a movie where stuff is exploding you'll know I've lost all my money.
Whether you're making a million dollar film or a $100 million film there is never enough money, there's never enough time.
Even if I had $200 million, I'm very wary of overusing CGI. I think it's a great tool and it can be used really effectively, but I feel like it does tend to be overused and especially in sci-fi stuff.
A movie that costs only $1.6 million doesn't have to be a cultural event to turn a profit.
'Generation Kill' was not a very glamorous shoot. For all intents and purposes, it was low budget, and all the money they had went to what you see on the screen.
They all want you to make a movie for under a million dollars, which I don't want to. I don't want to be a faux radical film-maker at 70. I did that. I don't need to do it again.
