Film Directors From The United States

"Boards don't hit back."

"When I look around, I always learn something: to be always yourself, and to express yourself, to have faith in yourself. Do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it."

"All types of knowledge, ultimately mean self knowledge."

"The greatest theatre that I experienced in my life was The Living Theatre and they were Off-Off-Broadway. And that was in the fifties."

"You need friends, especially in the theatre, you need friends. You need people to interchange with, interface with, connect with. Together you’re going to make it, you’re going to do it together, you’re going to put it on, whatever it is."

"Off-Off-Broadway is absolutely necessary. It doesn't have to be sanctioned by the state, subsidized or anything. The plank and the passion is what it's about."

"[Insomnia]’s a film that I look back on with great fondness. Working with Al Pacino, Robin Williams and Hilary Swank was an incredible experience. Sometimes, when people look for connections in your work, they look more at things like budget level than at the filmmaking itself. If you compare it to Oppenheimer, for example, there’s a similar attempt to try and convey the subjective experience of the protagonist. In the case of Pacino’s character, he’s suffering from a distortion of perception due to lack of sleep, and it’s not a million miles away from what I’m trying to do with showing Oppenheimer’s internal process, particularly at the beginning of the film."

"Dianne, thank you for teaching me about caring about the right things, and I love you."

"I mean, my mother knows. Or thinks she knows. Or supposes. Or suspects. I told her I was writing a story on Kevin Spacey, and she said, “Well, I hear he’s gay.” Now, you must understand some things about my mom. She is eighty years old and lives in a condominium in Florida. Although she loves movies—especially dark and intricate mysteries, which she calls “murders,” as in “You know how I like a good murder”—she has no connection to the movie business and has never, to my knowledge, outed anyone before. “Ma, where did you hear that?” “At the pool.” Of course—the pool. It is shocking what kind of knowledge is forced upon our parents—what kind of innocence is lost—at the pools of America. It is shocking, indeed, to imagine how many of America’s pools had to learn Kevin Spacey’s supposed secret before the supposed secret reached my mother’s pool and the grasp of her saintly and intrepid ears. One imagines the information—if information is what it is—creeping across the nation, from Hollywood to Florida, pool by pool, sort of like the dogged swimmer of Cheever’s short story, until at last an entire nation of moviegoers comes to hold Kevin Spacey under suspicion, until at last our own suspicion is all we know of him, all we have of him, all that’s left of him. It was not as surprising, though, to hear my mother repeat a rumor she’d heard about Kevin Spacey as it was to hear ostensible sophisticates in New York and Los Angeles repeat the very same rumor, as though my mother, on this count, were truly in the know; as though we have become unanimous in what we’ve heard, homogenized even to the extent of our access to secrets; as though the only thing one could possibly say about Kevin Spacey is what everyone else has already said, which is that he is supposed to be very smart, that he is supposed to be very private, that he is supposed to be extraordinarily committed to the protection and development of his extraordinary gifts as an actor, and that he is supposed to be gay. And that is all he’s supposed to be, by advance billing; that is it. He is one of our culture’s usual suspects, and, like the character he played in the movie of that name, he is both narrowed by our suspicions and set free by them, sprung by them, for he is an actor, and when all we know of an actor is that we don’t quite trust him, don’t quite believe him, then he is free to become whatever he wants to become, which, in the case of Kevin Spacey, is a movie star."

"I have a lot of respect and admiration for Anthony Rapp as an actor. I'm beyond horrified to hear his story. I honestly do not remember the encounter, it would have been 30 years ago. But if I did behave then as he describes, I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior, and I am sorry for the feelings he describes having carried with him all these years. This story has encouraged me to address other things about my life. I know that there are stories about me and that some have been fueled by the fact that I have been so protective of my privacy. As those closest to me know, in my life I have had relationships with both men and women. I have loved and had romantic encounters with men throughout my life, and I choose now to live as a gay man. I want to deal with this honestly and openly and that starts with examining my own behavior."

"The thing that is always so surprising about plays written in another century is how remarkably elastic they are. When you listen to the way in which Shakespeare attacks relationships, for example, even though the words may start off sounding foreign, in actuality they are so accessible, the motivations so clear, the resonances so contemporary. When you put it in a modern context - we could well be in a place with someone like Gaddafi or Mubarak - it becomes apparent how Richard III resonates with that type of personality, with media and manipulation, alliances and petty jealousies."

"John Lennon was many things to many people. A poet, a rocker, a leader, a troublemaker, a father, a husband — a man. Growing up, to me, he was a hero. The work of John Lennon was marked by its exquisite beauty and by its brutal honesty. So in that vein, let me say, that while I'm both deeply honored to be here — I'm also incredibly pissed-off. I'm outraged because this passionate prophet of peace, and so many others, are not with us here — because we live in an all-too-violent world. And so in the spirit of this occasion it is up to all of us, to do what we can, not only to keep John's songs alive, but help rebuild New York — and that includes your host..."

"Sometimes the person who is the most logical is the person whom we call insane."

"Well, whoever Keyser Söze is, I can tell you he is going to get gloriously drunk tonight."

"Reality is nothing but a collective hunch."

"Interviewer: You once said you had a drug problem... Lily: Yeah, I still do. It's so hard to find good grass these days."

"Why is it when we talk to God we're said to be praying — but when God talks to us, we're said to be schizophrenic?"

"The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat."

"The best mind-altering drug is truth."

"Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world."

"If you read a lot of books, you're considered well-read. But if you watch a lot of TV, you're not considered well-viewed."

"If truth is beauty, how come no one has their hair done in the library?"

"If the formula for water is H2O, is the formula for an ice cube H2O squared?"

"If love is the answer, could you please rephrase the question?"

"For fast acting relief, try slowing down."

"Don't be afraid of missing opportunities. Behind every failure is an opportunity somebody wishes they had missed."

"Remember we're all in this alone."

"I swear people don't want sex so much as they want somebody who'll listen to 'em … the first thing you learn after fellatio is how to listen."

"Your problem is your role models were models."

"I bet the worst part about dying is the part where your whole life passes before you."

"No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up."

"Sometimes I feel like a figment of my own imagination."

"If I had known what it would be like to have it all... I might have been willing to settle for less."

"All my life, I've always wanted to be somebody, but I see now I should have been more specific."

"It's my belief we developed language because of our deep inner need to complain."

"When you're dancing the mystical dance of the molecules, you're not the one who's leading."

"Reality is a crutch for people who can't cope with drugs."

"Reality is the leading cause of stress amongst those in touch with it...."

"The Angel was in the earth, and she led me to fix my eyes in Heaven. - And the remnants of the world were renewed by children and it was called Paradise."

"I want everybody really lost, and I want us all to be at home there. Something like that. Actually I am not interested in that, but I mean that's what you could do. Lots of people would like it. I have to say finally what I am interested in, like Socrates: peace... rest... nothing."

"People like Brando are just kindergarten compared to Kinski."

"Brando used to go cha-cha dancing with us. He could dance his ass off. He was the most charming motherfucker you ever met. He’d fuck anything. Anything! He’d fuck a mailbox. James Baldwin. Richard Pryor. Marvin Gaye. [He slept with them? How do you know that?] Come on, man. He did not give a fuck!"

"I realized there was a part of him always churning with something, some problem he was dealing with. I got the impression of a man who was trying to solve the pain of something – perhaps he was gifted with or burdened with – that he didn't really want, or he didn't want so long as he didn't understand it. It kept him, whether he liked it or not, continually alert, seeking for a solution and continually alive, and connected with all of us who have things inside of us going on all the time, and we became fascinated, unconsciously, and watched his turmoil. And that's the word. Turmoil. It was a continuing deep and personal problem."

"No figure of his influence has so precariously balanced a handful of unforgettable achievements against a brimming barrelful of embarrassments. And yet the reverence in which he is held by his profession is unshakable. His sometime friend and co-star Jack Nicholson said it simply and best: "He gave us our freedom." By which he meant that Brando's example permitted actors to go beyond characterizations that were merely well made, beautifully spoken and seemly in demeanor; allowed them to play not just a script's polished text but its rough, conflicting subtext as well."

"I like Brando's acting … and James Dean … and Richard Widmark. Quite a few of 'em I like."

"Talking about Marlon is like dancing about architecture. When you tell the stories, the stories would be rich. And everybody would laugh a lot. And then say "where does it come from?""

"Mr. Brando can chew on a matchstick with more skill than many actors can summon up to create a whole character, and simply watching him work is a lesson in the art of acting."

"Simply put, in film acting, there is before Brando, and there is after Brando. And they are like different worlds."

"The movie may not contain Brando's greatest performance, but it certainly contains his most emotionally overwhelming scene... As he weeps, as he attempts to remove her cosmetic death mask ("Look at you! You're a monument to your mother! You never wore makeup, never wore false eyelashes!"), he makes it absolutely clear why he is the best film actor of all time. He may be a bore, he may be a creep, he may act childish about the Academy Awards -- but there is no one else who could have played that scene flat-out, no holds barred, the way he did, and make it work triumphantly."

"This fear of the single man is seen most viscerally in Hollywood films, with their images of dangerous, potentially violent men. The most famous of these were stars such as James Dean, Montgomery Clift, Marlon Brando, and Anthony Perkins, each embodying a different type of moody, sensitive rebel."