Film Perception Quotes

Coming from where I came from, the Midwest, in the era I was born, the '30s, movies were glorious fun - Bette Davis dying or whatever. But whatever they were, they were not serious.

I think the whole stigma of 'black movies' is slowly being lost. When you look at movies like '12 Years A Slave,' to 'The Butler,' to 'The Best Man,' to 'Ride Along,' to even 'Think Like a Man' from last year - these movies are just good movies.

I personally don't distinguish between artistic and commercial films.

When a film is created, it is created in a language, which is not only about words, but also the way that very language encodes our perception of the world, our understanding of it.

Films are even stranger, for what we are seeing are not disguised people but photographs of disguised people, and yet we believe them while the film is being shown.

How the audience as a collectivity feels about a movie is important.

Film can be exciting, but more often, it's tedious.

It's said that most Americans under the age of 30 reflexively dislike movies made before 1970, especially those that were shot in black and white. If this is so, I suspect it's because such films portray an America that no longer exists.

Your relationship to a film, and to cinema, is very much determined by yourself, so what is relevant is you.

I would be more frightened as a writer if people thought my movies were like science fiction.

Julie' has not been perceived as a sleazy film, and I am grateful for that.

My greatest sense comes from the experience of performing in the movie. When I have a great experience, that becomes a perfect movie. If it makes a nickel, it's still perfect. The same is true with a movie that's a bad experience. If it makes a bejillion dollars, I will hate it till the end of time.

When I began making films, they were just movies: 'What's the new movie? What are you doing?' Now they're called 'adult dramas.'

Films with female protagonists don't attract many eyeballs. Most of them are perceived as feminist films. If Bollywood starts giving women major roles in entertaining movies, then the audience, too, will open up to the idea of watching commercial films in which the actresses do more than just play the role of the hero's love interest.

I have kind of a funny relationship with movies. I don't have to see the whole movie to get an impression of it or to let it have an influence on me.

[Kids today] think "Grease" is just one long music video. So they watch it over and over again the way we, when we were kids, we listened to albums.

Anytime somebody tells me they saw 'Safety Not Guaranteed' in the theater, my answer is, 'That was you?'

I had grown up thinking of movies as something to eat popcorn with. Bergman and the other European directors were the first ones to open my eyes to film as art.

Films about women and their concerns are seen as frivolous, limited and, most damaging of all, niche.

In the past, the movies I've made are perceived as dark, but a lot of comedies are way darker.

It is interesting: in France, the horror films are not so popular. People go to see them, but not for the same reason. It is more artistic and process.

It's not an old movie if you haven't seen it.

That's interesting to hear you say that because watching it [the Waitress] for the first time at Sundance was fascinating - it was so different from the experience of making it.

Nobody sees the same movie. I'm sure there are people who saw Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and thought "Finally a gay movie about men who really care about each other. Thank God!" That's not what I saw necessarily but I don't think any two people see the same movie.

You know, you're not aware of it, but you're following the action of the film through the body of the protagonist, you know? You feel what he feels when he jumps, when he leaps, when he wins, when he loses. And I think I just took it for granted that, you know, we can all do that, but it became obvious to me that men don't live through the female characters.