Film Directors From The United States

"But now, in March 2018, Putin was declaring that the US effort had failed. He unveiled the existence of five new nuclear weapons, all of which could circumvent US missile-defense systems. He concluded defiantly, "I hope everything that has been said today will sober any potential aggressor," adding, "No one listened to us. Listen to us now.""

"Acting like a hegemon, the United States, starting in 1999, took advantage of Russian weakness and broke its promise not to expand NATO, eventually adding 13 countries, the last of which was Montenegro, in 2017. When Bush announced plans to incorporate Georgia and Ukraine, Putin drew the line. Following the US-backed Ukrainian coup, he took back Crimea and made clear that there are limits to his toleration of NATO expansion..."

"In January 2018, the experts at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the hands of the Doomsday Clock to two minutes before midnight, where it had stood during the darkest days of the Cold War, from 1953 to 1960. The latest move of the hands was precipitated by the recklessness in Trump’s nuclear thinking and the deepening crisis over Korea. Trump wondered aloud about the point of having nuclear weapons if he couldn’t use them."

"In all my public statements, I was not at all in favor of anything he [G.W. Bush] did. He was a disaster for the country in his reaction to 9/11...Worst president we've ever had... To say that Trump is similar is ridiculous because it trivializes the situation.... He's got enough nutcases around him between Bolton and Pompeo that I would worry very, very much... You've got to look back at George Bush... and understand what a mess he put us into. We have not gotten out of Iraq. We have not gotten out of Afghanistan. We have not gotten out of the War on Terror... which is the greatest fiction since the Cold War back in 1945."

"Putin is the most mature statesmen in the whole world right now. He's been there for four American presidents, since Clinton...He's been everywhere, met everybody. And he sees the world as needing balance. It's not a uni-polar world, dominated by the United States... He's been very clear that we need balances of regional power. Unfortunately, the United States just doesn't want to believe that...it's our military side that scares the sh-- out of me,.. as we tend to be arrogant, that's when you become very dangerous. Somehow we have to learn that we don't have to be number one. We can be partners with the world."

"Fidel Castro was a brilliant person who predicted everything that has happened in the world since 2001... I made the film Comandante with the idea that it would be a historical profile of the man. The film can be seen on YouTube, but it could never be screened in theaters in the United States because they censored it and removed it a week before it was due for release...Then we made Looking for Fidel, which was possibly the most aggressive interview with Fidel. I asked him very difficult questions and that movie was screened on HBO. However, given the good job that Fidel did answering the questions they do not put it on enough on U.S. television. HBO instructed me to ask Fidel hard, tough questions, to put him on the spot. As you all know, that was not easily done and he was brilliant in his answers to all my questions. I think that’s why HBO has not shown the movie again."

"The most shocking part [about the assassination of JFK] is...the sequence of the shooting, the timing,... the wounds and the autopsy. It’s all quite shocking when you...think seriously about it. It doesn’t make any sense the way they described it. That’s the most shocking part of the case. When you start to investigate Oswald, of course there are a thousand interesting things that come up. The files on Oswald were much more closely supervised by the CIA then we knew at the time and were omitted by the Warren Commission. They treated it like a routine investigation, but it was hardly so. We draw a line between the cover-up and the assassination. The cover-up is filled with another cast of characters. That is to say, the Warren Commission itself, who is in charge of the investigation; and the main man, Alan Dulles, the ex-chief of the CIA and one of the most powerful figures in government. He was fired by Kennedy, as were all his top officials, two years earlier. He was put in charge of the investigation and buried certain information. That’s part of the cover-up."

"Julian Assange did much for free speech and is now being victimised by the abusers of that concept."

"Another film from Dreamworks which is also going to be unfriendly … I don't think most people in the US realise how important WikiLeaks is and why Julian's case needs support."

"Strong mind, no sun, friends who visit, work to be done, one documentary coming out from Alex Gibney that is not expected to be kind."

"A sad occasion in that Julian could not follow me out the door. He lives in a tiny room with great modesty and discipline."

"We have an obligation to those who died ... to remember"

"[In comparison with the Vietnam war] It's the same story in Afghanistan, Iraq and South America. It's white people meeting people who they think they are better than. And I feel that this war is the war of my life. I've seen it over and over again and if I can do one thing with what's left of my remaining years, it's just to cry it out and say it, I hope, with enough entertainment that people will want see it."

"My father was a Republican and he hated Roosevelt. And that's sort of been the battle of my life, I think. You have to understand I grew up a Republican conservative. I hated Castro. And I put my money where my mouth was because I went to war, but I understood pretty quickly that this was another place, another culture and we would never fit in there."

"Since that day, the media has chanted the mantra that Oswald did it alone. But the American public... has never accepted it. They smell a rat."

"There was a civil war in this country... Kennedy provoked such hostility and hatred. His death was cheered in the South because of his support for Martin Luther King. He was moving to change things on all fronts. He was starting to end the Cold War. He made a deal with Khruschev and Russia in 1962 to end the missile crisis, and he furthered the... Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963. He... described the Soviets for the first time in American history as mortals, like us, who care about their children. He seemed to have an expanding vision of the world, much like Gorbachev did in Russia in the '80s."

"You know, when I first went into the movies Lionel Barrymore played my grandfather. Later he played my father, and finally he played my husband. If he had lived I'm sure I would have played his mother. That's the way it is in Hollywood. The men get younger and the women get older."

"The Cobweb was just plain weird, but I got to know and admire Miss Lillian Gish."

"I never cease to wonder at my luck in having for my sister the woman who, more than any other woman in America, possesses all the qualities of true greatness."

"For Lillian Gish, My Favorite Actress. On the occasion of her 1st visit to New York of which this book is a practical guide. From Her Chattel, F. Scott Fitzgerald"

"Lillian Gish is not only the best actress in her profession, but has the best mind of any woman I have ever met."

"According to director Lindsay Anderson, one day while filming The Whales of August he said to Lillian Gish, "Miss Gish, you have just given me a perfect close-up." Bette Davis remarked: "She should. She invented 'em.""

"Thalberg wanted commercial hits. I wanted art."

"I'm so glad I didn't ruin a man's life by marrying him."

"I never chose money, I always chose people. I wanted to be around people who knew more than I did. I think that’s why I never fell in love with an actor. They never seemed to know any more than I did. I wanted to be with writers… My idea of a dream man was Thornton Wilder."

"When I was in films, we pretended to kiss but we didn't. It was considered unsanitary. Now they swallow each others' tonsils. It's disgusting."

"If you're caught acting, nobody believes you."

"I don't feel I'm old. I just feel I'm me. And I've always been a happy person. I love the human race. I love my work. I love the world—I've been around it four times, you know. And I'm a believing person. I believe in God, even though I can't see him. You can't see the air in this room, right? But take it away and you're dead. And I believe there's something for us after we die. The world isn't wasteful. It keeps going on and I think we do too."

"I'd like to dedicate this award to all the women before me that never had the chances that I've had, the survivors, the pioneers and the outcasts. My blood, my tradition. And I'd like to thank all the people in this industry who've respected my choices and have not been afraid of the power and dignity that that entitled me to."

"Attacking the rich is not envy. It is self defense. The hoarding of wealth is the cause of poverty. The rich aren’t just indifferent to poverty; they create it and maintain it."

"I cannot believe in God when there is no scientific evidence for the existence of a supreme being and creator."

"Normal is not something to aspire to, it is something to get away from."

"This is such a big deal, and my life is so simple. There are very few things — there's love, and work, and family. And I'd like to thank all my families, all the tribes that I come from and, most importantly, my mother Brandy who taught me that all my finger paintings were Picasso's and that I didn't have to be afraid. And, mostly, that cruelty might be very human, and it might be very cultural, but it's not acceptable."

"The films are realistic fantasies. Bullets are easy. You can buy them. Emotions are not. They're priceless."

"It could be that today's conservative movement remains in thrall to the same narrative that has defined its attitude toward film and the arts for decades. Inspired by feelings of exclusion after Hollywood and the popular culture turned leftward in the '60s and '70s, this narrative has defined the film industry as an irredeemably liberal institution toward which conservatives can only act in opposition—never engagement. Ironically, this narrative ignores the actual history of Hollywood, in which conservatives had a strong presence from the industry's founding in the early 20th century up through the '40s, '50s and into the mid-'60s]. The conservative Hollywood community at that time included such leading directors as Howard Hawks, Frank Capra, and Cecil B. DeMille, and major stars like John Wayne, Clark Gable, and Charlton Heston. These talents often worked side by side with notable Hollywood liberals like directors Billy Wilder, William Wyler, and John Huston, and stars like Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, and Spencer Tracy. The richness of classic Hollywood cinema is widely regarded as a testament to the ability of these two communities to work together, regardless of political differences. As the younger, more left-leaning "New Hollywood" generation swept into the industry in the late '60s and '70s, this older group of Hollywood conservatives faded away, never to be replaced. Except for a brief period in the '80s when the Reagan Presidency led to a conservative reengagement with film—with popular stars like Clint Eastwood, Sylvester Stallone, and Arnold Schwarzenegger making macho, patriotic action films—conservatives appeared to abandon popular culture altogether. In the wake of this retreat, conservative failure to engage with Hollywood now appears to have been recast by today's East Coast conservative establishment into a generalized opposition toward film and popular culture itself. In the early '90s, conservative film critic Michael Medved codified this oppositional feeling toward Hollywood in his best-selling book Hollywood vs. America."

"Remember the mind is your best muscle ...BIG ARMS can move rocks, but BIG WORDS can move mountains... Ride the brain train for success...."

"Once in one's life, for one mortal moment, one must make a grab for immortality; if not, one has not lived"

"Fred Astaire represented the aristocracy, I represented the proletariat."

"It's all true. It's true I didn't want to be a dancer. What I really wanted to be was a shortstop for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Then at 14 I discovered girls, and began to study dancing diligently. At that time dancing was the only way you could put your arm around the girl. Dancing was courtship. Only later did I discover you dance joy. You dance love. You dance dreams. Of course, the Pittsburgh Pirates lost a hell of a shortstop."

"In the 1930s, when I started, Martha Graham was the only dancer doing anything modern, but she did it all to classical music. I couldn't see myself doing Swan Lake every night, and I wanted to develop a truly American style. The only dancer in the movies at that time with any success was Fred Astaire, but he did very small, elegant steps in a top hat, white tie, and tails."

"I really don't know why I clicked. I didn't want to be a dancer, I just did it to work my way through college. But I was always an athlete and gymnast, so it came naturally."

"You want to be able to provide something, and you're pissing down a fucking well. It will suck you dry and take everything you have and, like being a parent, you can pour as much love as you want, and your kid still says, "Just let me right out here, you don't have to take me all the way." You're working to make yourself obsolete. I'm not going to make Persona - my movies are fairly obvious in what the people want and what it is that's happening; it;s not that internalized. What's internalized is how you process the information from the singular, subjective point of view. And that becomes the subtext of it."

"He's just scary smart, sort of smarter than everyone else in the room. There's just a handful of these people who know absolutely everything about the process. They could do everyone's job brilliantly. Every aspect is under their control."

"Thank you to the stellar collection of photographers, designers, editors, musicians, costumers, painters, researchers, electricians and craftspeople who without whom I'd just be a bitter man with a lot of opinions"

"I thought it was so strange because I normally make these pitch-black studies of misanthropes or the occasional movie about serial killers, sowhat could the possibly see in this material for me."

"You can either look at your career as the things you're going to leave behind, and they have to be executed flawlessly and you have to know exactly what it is that you're doing. Or you can be realistic about the fact that you're going to learn as you practice what you do."

"Hollywood is great. I also think it's stupid and small-minded and shortsighted. I'm sure there are people who get into movies so they can get nice tables at restaurants."

"You have a responsibility for the way you make the audience feel, and I want them to feel uncomfortable."

"Entertainment has to come hand in hand with a little bit of medicine. Some people go to the movies to be reminded that everything's okay. I don't make those kinds of movies. That, to me, is a lie. Everything's not okay."

"As much as people pretend 'I fit in, I understand, I get the rules,' there are always times spent away from that where you go, 'I thought I knew. It seemed so clear to me, and then...' That sense of loneliness, or the sense of not fitting in or being out of depth, is probably the most common denominator."