Film Directors From England

"[After Peeping Tom] When they got me on my own [the critics] gleefully sawed off the limb and jumped up and down on the corpse."

"Everyone has heard of Canterbury if only because they murder archbishops there."

"Art is merciless observation, sympathy, imagination, and a sense of detachment that is almost cruelty."

"The great innovators have always been fearless.... I have fallen off haystacks, out of trees, over cliffs. I have been nearly drowned, shot and hanged. I have been in countless car crashes without getting a scratch. I have been alone in an office with Louis B. Mayer."

"Actors and technicians were being demobbed every day. Very soon the only ham actor left in the combined forces would be General George Patton."

"For ten years we had all been told to go out and die for freedom and democracy; but now the war was over, The Red Shoes told us to go out and die for art."

"My master in film, Buñuel, was a far greater storyteller than I. It was just that in my films miracles occur on the screen."

"[Cinematographer] Jack Cardiff once asked Powell "Michael, do you make films for all types of audiences, or just for yourself?" Michael shook his head vigorously. "I make films for myself. What I express I hope most people will understand. For the rest, well, that's their problem.""

"[of his wife Frankie] In fact, if only I had been the perfect husband, she would have been the perfect wife."

"I got my first assignment as a director in 1927. I was slim, arrogant, intelligent, foolish, shy, cocksure, dreamy and irritating. Today, I'm no longer slim."

"I live cinema. I chose the cinema when I was very young, sixteen years old, and from then on my memories virtually coincide with the history of the cinema ... I'm not a director with a personal style, I am simply cinema. I have grown up with and through cinema; everything that I've had in the way of education has been through the cinema; insofar as I'm interested in images, in books, in music, it's all due to the cinema."

"Mel Gibson is in a town that’s run by Jews and he said the wrong thing because he’s actually bitten the hand that I guess has fed him—and doesn’t need to feed him anymore because he’s got enough dough."

"I used to be under the impression that in some kind of wanky, bullshit way, acting was like therapy: you get in and grapple with and exorcise all those demons inside of you. I don't believe that anymore. It's like a snow shaker. You shake the thing up, but it can't escape the glass. It can't get out. And it will settle until the next time you shake it up."

"When I was young, I used to queue at the theater early in the morning to see Olivier. His performances were electrifying...I admired their originality and courage...and their terror. There is no acting like it today. He made me want to become part of the theater."

"I think you're the only actor in the world who plays in a Shakespeare play with a special, tender familiarity as if you were keeping it in the family."

"I'm breaking all the rules, but I have to say you have been my idol. I admit being jealous of an actor. How I would like to have been what you are. How I wish my career had approximated yours. You have never deserted or failed to serve our profession. Sir, to be presented an award by you gives me infinite pride. You, being a Lord, have raised me to a slightly higher position. I don't feel that I'm quite such a commoner. But, more important, I'm Eddie and you're Larry. And how much easier that is."

"Such subtlety, such detail, biting deeper into the role than any actor of my time, or indeed any time."

"Olivier smoked dope. He claimed that he didn't, but he did. I know because I gave him a joint. He got very mellow."

"[Asked "So what was the legendary actor really like in the flesh?"] He was so many different things. He could be generous, he could be quite spiteful, he could be, as a performer, quite extraordinary. I don’t think he was a better actor than a lot of his contemporaries but as a performer-magician there was nobody like him. He could pull things out of a hat that just took your breath away."

"He could speak Shakespeare's lines as naturally as if he were actually thinking them."

"If I wasn't an actor, I think I'd have gone mad. You have to have extra voltage, some extra temperament to reach certain heights. Art is a little bit larger than life — it's an exhalation of life and I think you probably need a little touch of madness."

"As a man and an actor he was an inspiration. I loved him."

"Acting is illusion, as much illusion as magic is — and not so much a matter of being real. I mean, I would probably shock Lee Strasberg."

"Like coming for a living."

"I think that bloody old National nearly killed me."

"Never. The shot is too big for the cannon."

"If Coca-Cola accidentally created 100 million cans of faulty Coke, you know for sure the entire 100 million cans would be dropped in the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean, without a second thought and irrespective of what that did to the year's profits. What do we do with a crappy movie? We double its advertising budget and hope for a big opening weekend. What have we done for the audience as they walk out of the cinema? We've alienated them. We've sold audiences a piece of junk; we just took twelve dollars away from a couple and we think we've done ourselves no long-term damage."

"I don't need you to remind me of my age, I have a bladder to do that for me."

"A stupid person's idea of a clever person"

"Aquinas and Augustus of Hippo both proposed this extraordinary idea that babies who were unbaptised would not know heaven. They also proposed the idea of purgatory which doesn’t exist in The Bible. There’s absolutely no evidence for it. However, what an extraordinary brilliant coup to imagine such a thing as purgatory. That a soul needs to be prayed for, in order to go to heaven. In order to turn left when he enters the aeroplane of heaven and get a first class seat. That, he needs to be prayed for. And many hundreds, indeed over a thousand years, you’ll be amazed what generous terms those prayers came at. Sometimes as little as two thirds of a year’s salary. Could ensure that a dead loved one would go to heaven. And money could ensure that your baby. Your dead child, your dead uncle, your dead mother, could go to heaven. And if you were rich enough, you could have a chantry built and monks would permanently sing prayers so that that existence in heaven for the child would go up and up and up until they were at the table of the Lord themselves."

"She has a very intense poetic mind. That's what makes it — that voice that comes in."

"I was called by my agent, who said "Would you like to record a track with Kate Bush?" To which there is only F-ing one possible answer. Unless its me singing. I said, "She does know I can't sing?" "No-no-no, it would be voicing, saying words for snow. … I still can't believe it says "Kate Bush-Stephen Fry.""

"I actually got a Ugandan Minister to say, on camera— he's the Minister of Ethics and Integrity, it's the only such ministry in the world— and I said to him, "Look, even if these three utterly false supports on which you base your homophobia are true, which they aren't, there's so much more to worry about in your country than the odd gay person going to bed with the other gay person. For example, you have almost an epidemic of child rape in this country, which is just frightening." And he said, "Ah, but it is the right kind of child rape." I said, "That was on camera. Do you know that was on camera?" He said, "Yes." I said, "Can you just explain what you meant?" "Well, it is men raping girls. Which is natural.""

"Wit can be beautiful, because it expresses and distils an idea."

"A cut glass English accent can fool unsuspecting Americans into detecting a brilliance that isn't there."

"I gather a repulsive nobody writing in a paper no one of any decency would be seen dead with has written something loathesome and inhumane."

"Weak watery sun, but sun nonetheless. Why does it take me nearly 2 hours just to get through the morning emails? Pah, poo and pants."

"Swearing is a really important part of one's life. It would be impossible to imagine going through life without swearing and without enjoying swearing... There used to be mad, silly, prissy people who used to say swearing was a sign of a poor vocabulary - such utter nonsense. The people I know who swear the most tend to have the widest vocabularies and the kind of person who says swearing is a sign of a poor vocabulary usually have a pretty poor vocabulary themselves... The sort of twee person who thinks swearing is in any way a sign of a lack of education or a lack of verbal interest or -is just a fucking lunatic... I haven't met anybody who's truly shocked at swearing, really, they're only shocked on behalf of other people. Well, you know, that's preposterous... or they say 'it's not necessary'. As if that should stop one doing it! It's not necessary to have coloured socks, it's not necessary for this cushion to be here, but is anyone going to write in and say 'I was shocked to see that cushion there, it really wasn't necessary'? No, things not being necessary is what makes life interesting - the little extras in life."

"There are a series of men and women whose whole job is to stop you from having people filmed in cars not wearing seat belts or making phone calls. It’s called compliance. Compliance with what?! Compliance with being an arsehole?! Compliance with stupidity?! Compliance with making this country a shithole!? I cannot believe that anybody would allow this to happen. I cannot believe they wouldn’t just say no, I’m gonna film it the way it should be. What is the point of having cars and backgrounds and extras, what’s the point of trying to make it realistic, why not just do it against cardboard? If you're not allowed to do it as it really would be done –because what? Because you’re setting a bad example? Well what kind of example are you setting by betraying your country, or shooting people in the face? I don’t know where to begin, and I don’t know where to end. I want to take the people who are responsible for this and I want to squeeze the life out of them! I never want them to get up again. I want them to understand how insane they are. And I have a horrible feeling that they’re shaking their head and saying something about how it’s wrong to set a bad example to children or something, whereas shooting people in the face (how many times do I have to say this?) apparently isn’t setting a bad example to children –oh my god! I want to explode with fury! And the awful thing is they win! The directors and the producers of the programme comply! Ugh, why don’t they just tell them to fuck off?!"

"Well I'm afraid it simply does, um, [the Catholic Church] does condemn [homosexuality], yes, it calls it a - the official word is disorder, but it was refined by the current Pontiff, Ratzinger, who called it a 'moral evil'. But on the other hand we must remember, as the point that was made is that the church is very loose on moral evils because, although they try to accuse people like me who believe in the empiricism and the enlightenment of somehow what they call moral relativism, as if it's some appalling sin where what it actually means is thought, um, they um, they for example thought that slavery was perfectly fine... absolutely okay, and then they didn't, and what is the point of the Catholic Church if it says 'oh well we couldn't know better because nobody else did'? (To the affirmative team) Then what are you for?!"

"I genuinely believe that the Catholic church is not, to put it at its mildest, a force for good in the world... We certainly don’t need the stigmatisation, the victimisation that leads to the playground bullying when people say: “You’re a disordered, morally evil individual.” That’s not nice, it isn’t nice."

"Dacre is, all those who have had the misfortune to work for him assure me, just about as loathsome, self-regarding, morally putrid, vengeful and disgusting a man as it possible to be."

"It's now very common to hear people say, "I'm rather offended by that", as if that gives them certain rights. It's no more than a whine. It has no meaning, it has no purpose, it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. "I'm offended by that." Well, so fucking what?"

"What decent person would want to spend a life picking and cavilling? Picture this scene. A critic arrives at the gates of heaven. 'And what did you do?' asks Saint Peter. 'Well', says the dead soul. 'I criticised things'. 'I beg your pardon?' 'You know, other people wrote things, performed things, painted things and I said stuff like, "thin and unconvincing", "turgid and uninspired", "competent and serviceable,"...you know'."

"You cannot work too hard at poetry. People are bad at it not because they have tin ears, but because they simply don't have the faintest idea how much work goes into it. It's not as if you're ordering a pizza or doing something that requires direct communication in a very banal way. But it seems these days the only people who spend time over things are retired people and prisoners. We bolt things, untasted. It's so easy to say, 'That'll do.' Everyone's in a hurry. People are intellectually lazy, morally lazy, ethically lazy...All the time. When people get angry with a traffic warden they don't stop and think what it would be like to be a traffic warden or how annoying it would be if people could park wherever they liked. People talk lazily about how hypocritical politicians are. But everyone is. On the one hand we hate that petrol is expensive and on the other we go on about global warming. We abrogate the responsibility for thought and moral decisions onto others and then have the luxury of saying it's not good enough."

"Pathetic, naive, like small noisy tantrums."

"I think faith in each other is much harder than faith in God or faith in crystals. I very rarely have faith in God; I occasionally have little spasms of it, but they go away, if I think hard enough about it. I am incandescent with rage at the idea of horoscopes and of crystals and of the nonsense of 'New Age', or indeed even more pseudo-scientific things: self-help, and the whole culture of 'searching for answers', when for me, as someone brought up in the unashamed Western tradition of music and poetry and philosophy, all the answers are there in the work that has been done by humanity before us, in literature, in art, in science, in all the marvels that have created this moment now, instead of people looking away. The image to me . . . is gold does exist, and for 'gold' say 'truth', say 'the answer', say 'love', say 'justice', say anything: it does exist. But the only way in this world you can achieve gold is to be incredibly intelligent about geology, to learn what mankind has learnt, to learn where it might lie, and then break your fingers and blister your skin in digging for it, and then sweat and sweat in a forge, and smelt it. And you will have gold, but you will never have it by closing your eyes and wishing for it. No angel will lean out of the bar of heaven and drop down sheets of gold for you. And we live in a society in which people believe they will. But the real answer, that there is gold, and that all you have to do is try and understand the world enough to get down into the muck of it, and you will have it, you will have truth, you will have justice, you will have understanding, but not by wishing for it."

"He takes coke and has slept with a prostitute - but he's a TV presenter for God's sake!"

"Greasy, miserable, British and pathetic"

"There’s nothing worse than the British in one of their fits of morality."