Film Directors From England

"He did hate doing it. It was alien to his nature. He reluctantly let himself be drawn into this thing, thinking what he would have done would have been a very passionate politicised scream of emotion, and what he was being pushed into was this box he didn't feel at all comfortable in."

"That period had seen Reagan starting the Strategic Defense Initiative, the downing of the Korean Airliner by the Soviets, and [Reagan] calling the Soviet Union the Evil Empire. [...] It was perhaps the most dangerous time for the world since the Cuban missile crisis and...there was this feeling that BBC wasn’t dealing with this in any way. Everyone was very paranoid. The world was on the brink of nuclear war and no one knew anything about it."

"There's the hospital sequence in The Day After and there's the hospital sequence in Threads. [...] In The Day After people are being wheeled in on gurneys and everybody's stressed, but they're coping with it as they would do on ER or something like that. In Threads, the floor is covered with muck and shit and blood and people don't have anything they can work with. [...] We see people having their legs amputated without an anesthetic, just something stuck between their teeth for them to bite on. That's what it's going to be like! And I wanted every part of this movie to be "That's what it's going to be like"."

"I wanted him to use all his experience and intuition and empathy with people who'd grown up around him in Sheffield and put that into the movie, and I would be [...] the alien force, who was the voice of what science can do, and I would kind of foist these horrible indignities and horrors on these people, and he would try and get them to behave the way they would. So there was an innate conflict in that. We had many shouting matches, really passionate things, totally necessary for doing this."

"In this movie, from the outset, I wanted to put it in the scale of people that you might know, people like yourself, your immediate family, relations and so on, and no bigger than that, and not really to show anything except how it would happen to them. So, there's no God's eye view in this movie. You don't actually get to look down and get the overall picture and see maps of Europe and maps of the world and so on. You just get what's happening to these people, and it's all really done from ground level. There's no cinematic crane shots or anything like that. It's just very, very documentary."

"It is unthinkable for most people. Nuclear war is so outside your everyday experience it’s hard to get your mind around it. And if you can’t get your mind around it, you can’t talk about it and have a meaningful debate."

"We're not in the 1980s anymore to remember how terrified everybody was, how paranoid everybody was about the end of the world being nigh. In the year that I had prepped this movie in 1983, the Korean airliner was shot down by the Russians, Reagan gave his "Evil Empire" speech, Strategic Defense Initiative, "Star Wars" started and people like Herman Kahn in the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica [...] were talking about "winnable" nuclear war and game theory, and I just thought "people who talk like that, and people who behave like that, politically, and make speeches like that, they're doing that because they have no real sense, no physical sense of what a nuclear war would be like.""

"The idea was to take a movie which was about death...and use the iconography of life to tell the story."

"I remember a scientist who worked on the Manhattan Project said to me "you know, when I hear people talking about winnable nuclear wars, I just wish I could take them to the Mojave desert, the Nevada desert, wherever, strip them down to their underwear, and let them watch an actual nuclear explosion from miles away, feel the blistering heat pulse on their skin, and feel the blast wave sweep over them and shake their heart and their lungs around inside their rib cage. Then they would have a sense of what it was they were talking about and they wouldn't talk about a winnable nuclear war.""

"I fell into porn by mistake, actually."

"Porn can be very uncomfortable as you must be aware of the camera and make sure they are getting the right shot, as well as if there's enough light getting in so they can see. You also have to position yourself to show off the girl, ensuring she looks the best she possibly can."

"I've been in the industry for about 13 years now, but I would say my name only got bigger once I came to America and started working for Brazzers. The exposure they get is on another level. To make it big in the industry these days you have to be able to perform, first and foremost, but a huge part of making it big in porn is marketing yourself on various social media outlets."

"Thankfully, I've never had to use the insurance policy. And although a million dollars is a lot of money, to me, my penis is priceless."

"It’s funny, when you use tiny sums of money, like when I started off, actually, it is equally as hard, because that money is someone’s money. It’s not a corporation, not a company, you have taken that money from friends or family, however you have raised it. It’s a funny thing coming up through filmmaking that way, it really makes you be responsible and to really appreciate the money that people are putting it."

"Horror movies have been in some way or another doing the same thing for hundreds of years: don't go down to the basement, don’t talk to that stranger, don’t have sex, don’t be a jerk to others. They’re all cautionary tales in one way or another, so the trick these days is getting an audience to invest in your story. If they're not invested in it, you’re just showing them another dark corridor with something that goes “bang” to try and scare them."

"Actors are agents of change. A film, a piece of theater, a piece of music, or a book can make a difference. It can change the world."

"Meanwhile the dreaded press and even in the unit publicist the unstoppable desire to compare one job with another—was X more difficult than Y? No, X=X and Y=Y. Don't be lazy."

"I realise as soon as that [Snape's] ring and costume go on—something happens. It becomes alien to be chatty, smiley, open. The character narrows me down, tightens me up. Not good qualities on a film set. I have never been less communicative with a crew. Fortunately, Dan [Radcliffe] fills that role with ease and charm. And youth."

"I'm pretty sure he came and saw everything I ever did on stage both in London and New York. He didn't have to do that."

"I've never been one for late nights, which is why I have always preferred making films to theatre. A play takes over your life: you start to feel sick at lunchtime and by mid-afternoon you're wishing for a bomb scare so the whole thing will be called off. Of course, if the evening goes well and you get the applause then it's wonderful. We're a strange bunch, we actors."

"I had a very specific moment where I had watched Blade Runner [1982] – at home on VHS, not in the cinema because I was then too young. I became obsessed with it, the beauty of the density and layering of the imagery. And then, when I was old enough, I watched Alien [1979], and as when you hear two pieces by the same musician, or read two books by the same writer, I distinctly remember realising it was the same mind behind these two different movies. I had been making my own films, just shooting things and cutting them together, but suddenly, at the age of 13 or 14, I understood directing – the closest thing to what defines filmmaking for me. Realising that there was a mind controlling that aesthetic, that feeling at the end of the film. And it wasn’t any one thing: it was photography; it was sound; it was costumes… It was control over the whole mise en scène. My realisation was very particular to Ridley Scott, and my love for his films and obsession with the way he was doing things."

"Universe to me is, if you’d like, the final character. Your landscape in a western is one of the most important characters the film has. The best westerns are about man against his own landscape. I think people have lost the ability to do that."

"Most novelists are desperate to do what I do."

"Oh, it was always my thesis theory. It was one or two people who were relevant were... I can't remember if Hampton agreed with me or not. But I remember someone had said, “Well, isn't it corny?” I said, “Listen, I'll be the best fucking judge of that. I'm the director, okay?” So, and that, you learn -- you know, by then I'm 44, so I'm no fucking chicken. I'm a very experienced director from commercials and The Duellists and Alien. So, I'm able to, you know, answer that with confidence at the time, and say, “You know, back off, it's what it's gonna be.” Harrison, he was never -- I don't remember, actually. I think Harrison was going, “Uh, I don't know about that.” I said, “But you have to be, because Gaff, who leaves a trail of origami everywhere, will leave you a little piece of origami at the end of the movie to say, ‘I've been here, I left her alive, and I can't resist letting you know what's in your most private thoughts when you get drunk is a fucking unicorn!’” Right? So, I love Beavis and Butthead, so what should follow that is “Duh.” So now it will be revealed [in the sequel], one way or the other."

"I honestly wasn't paying attention in school when I was told the story of Moses. Some of the details of his life are extraordinary."

"I do despair. That's a heavy word, but picking up a newspaper every day, how can you not despair at what's happening in the world, and how we're represented as human beings? The disappointments and corruption are dismaying at every level. And the biggest source of evil is of course religion. … Can you think of a good one? A just and kind and tolerant religion? … Everyone is tearing each other apart in the name of their personal god. And the irony is, by definition, they're probably worshipping the same god."

"Just stare up at the stars at night, and you'll have those corny thoughts like we all do. How can you look at the galaxy and not feel insignificant? How on earth can we be it? It doesn't make sense. … It doesn't matter how much faith you have or don't have. I just don't buy the idea that we're alone. There's got to be some form of life out there."

"How could that have happened? ... Even if it was a hand of God … I’d read – and I don’t know how they know this – but in approximately 3000 BC there was a massive undersea volcano and earthquake, which created a tsunami wave that had to have been a couple of hundred feet high. Just off the heel of Italy. Diagonally across you’re staring right up the mouth of the Nile, so I’m wondering if that had anything to do with that."

"I'm really intrigued by those eternal questions of creation and belief and faith. I don't care who you are, it's what we all think about. It's in the back of all our minds."

"I think he writes the truth. Because life is like that most of the time in some shape or form, whether it’s illness or the end of the world. Cormac’s a writer’s writer. You read his writing and think, I can do that, and then you sit down and try. And you try, dude."

"How up is space?"

"Are you havin' my ass?"

"OK, let's make some sweet, bunty little smubbles."

"I will kill all of you. All the ghosts will come."

"Some people are so Scottish, it looks like it hurts them."

"If we have the smegging compass, Jeremy, you don't need to look at the farting sun."

"Dogs hate lettuce."

"A pig never forgets, Ryan. They actually are pretty smart, I think, pigs. They can play pong or something."

"Does rocks float on lava?"

"If you were a whale, water would be smaller."

"We'll have an office suck-off."

"Maybe we can shake the life back into him."

"I'm feeling lucky!"

"Do you know what I found out that blew my mouth?"

"I tried to bang Ray in my house, and bloody there was somebody already in there."

"Do you actually control what your brain says?"

"If you sleep upside down, do you dream upside down?"

"Let's just hope I don't find any more turtles, 'cause it is really getting me depressed."

"Would you guys still be friends with me if my name was Henry Dillmond?"

"I drank holy water blessed by the pope. It was mingin'."