- You have to believe.
- Studios are like flies - they'll both eat honey or shit with equal enthusiasm.
- [from his Oscar acceptance speech for Amadeus (1984)] The five pictures nominated this year all had a curious relationship, in the fact that the filmmakers who made them had to fight and overcame many obstacles to make their films and to film their visions. One has to be proud to be a peer of the people who made The Killing Fields (1984), A Passage to India (1984), A Soldier's Story (1984) and Places in the Heart (1984).
- You don't make movies to be art movies. You make movies that move you emotionally because if you're going to commit five years of your life to a movie, you need something to keep you going.
- The question is why does Hollywood go on making crap they pass off as movies? The answer is money.
- I don't worry about what everyone wants to see. I make movies that please a writer, director and myself. I always think there are enough people smart as me and sensitive as me.
- [on The English Patient (1996)] We went everywhere. We had some hearty handshakes, and they all said, 'We love it, we love it, we love it,' that they wanted to make great movies just like 'The English Patient' that are serious and intelligent, but then they'd look at you and say, 'Could we cast Demi Moore in the role?' They were all afraid of it. And that's the way it is.
- [accepting the Irving G Thalberg memorial award at the 1997 Oscars] Darryl F. Zanuck, Hal B. Wallis, David O. Selznick, Walt Disney and Samuel Goldwyn are among the giants who were the early recipients of this award. All are recognised as producers who brought passion to their films and they were really bound together by their love of moviemaking. Passion is an unmeasurable, indescribable factor that separates movie from movie; passion moves freely across borders, speaks every language and flourishes in every culture. The movement of passion is the most gratifying satisfaction in any moviemaker's life. This happens when you see and hear people all over the world share their laughter, their crying and their sudden gasps at identical screen moments. Samuel Hoffenstein, a poet and screenwriter, poetically wrote, "The Holy Grail is not in the finding - it is in the journey." The Irving Thalberg award memorializes a giant among giants, who brought us a sense of film history. This belongs to the many with whom I have shared dreams and journeys. My cup is full. Thank you.
- [from his Oscar acceptance speech for The English Patient (1996)] I said my cup was full before - now it runneth over. I'd like to thank actors - I love actors - producers are supposed to not be in love with them, but I love them, and I love writers and directors too. And the whole crew, everyone who worked on the picture, for what they did in making the picture happen, when we were shut down, ran out of money, everyone stayed there in Italy, without pay - we had no money to pay them - and then Harvey and Bob Weinstein came through and financed the picture. We had final cut though!
- [on The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988)] The first time I read it, I read it as a book and loved it. Then, later, Milos Forman started talking about making a film of it. I said yes, I think a good film could be made of it. And Jean-Claude Carrière said he'd like to do it. We had a meeting and I said, "Let's write down what we think the critical focus of the film is on a piece of paper." And we all wrote down - the love story. When we went to see Milan Kundera the next day I asked him - "Milan, what do you think is the center of the book?" And he said - "The love story, of course." Which made us feel pretty good: once you have the center, you can do many things, change many things, as long as you keep the center.
- [on The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988)] Philosophy on film is boring. It's like ballet, which is beautiful to watch for two hours onstage, but 10 minutes on the screen will drive you crazy. It's the same thing with characters philosophizing about their lives, saying, "Well, look what is happening to us." You say - what the hell are you telling me that for? Am I a moron? I can see it. You have to get away from that because, though almost all literature is composed of inner dialogue and thoughts, on the screen you have the advantage of...the screen actually is more real, whatever real is, than either books or theater. You're seeing it and you're either saying "that's it" or "that's not it." That changes everything. In books and plays you can talk about philosophy. In movies you've got to show it. Milan Kundera said in an essay he is not interested in story as story. He's interested in the human condition affected by history. When those tanks came down the street, for us, for him, for the actors, it was the perfect expression of Milan's philosophy.
- [from his Oscar acceptance speech for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)] The dream started at the Rialto Theater in Passaic, New Jersey, a long time ago, but now gratification comes from all over the world. In Japan a reporter said, "You must have had a grand passion to make this picture", and in France a director said, "You must be fiercely proud", and they were both right. What is gratifying right now is to know that you share our pride and our passion with us.
- [1988 interview, on One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)] Michael [Michael Douglas], Milos [Milos Forman] and myself would be sitting in a room - not as fancy as this - at the Sunset Marquee working on the script, cursing and insulting each other. But the thing that kept us together, all three of us, was that the picture was the main thing. Michael would say, "Well, fuck me! I'm only a television person" after we'd tell him, "That's stupid, Michael." And he'd tell me, "Why don't you go back to making records" or we'd say to Milos, "What the fuck, you Europeans come over here and tell us what to do?" Those kinds of stupid statements were made. But we loved each other. There's a great satisfaction working on good pictures. People become close.
- [1988 interview] I have to differ with Kirk Douglas. He has said I felt he was too old for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975). He's wrong. He wasn't too old, he was too big. My philosophy then and now is that in certain parts you can't have a star. If a film hits, then a star can help. But a star doesn't make a film and we've seen that time and time again. Heartburn (1986), Ironweed (1987), Ishtar (1987). Decisions to hire stars and pay their inflated salaries are often made out of fear, or because some executive is covering his tail with his stockholders. "How could we miss with Joe Blow?"
- [on Amadeus (1984)] I thought it was a great play - the play really worked for me. He [Milos Forman] said, "Well, what about a picture?" I said, "It's not a picture, I don't think it's a picture - there's not enough about Mozart for me." And then Milos hit me on the arm - I still have the bruises even though that was 20 years ago - he said, "That's right! It needs music, Mozart and music."
- [on his favourite directors] Well, obviously Milos Forman since he directed some of my most successful films. But there are others. Woody Allen comes to mind. Sidney Lumet, Stanley Donen and Akira Kurosawa. Those are a few right off the top of my head.
- [on his favourite actors] Spencer Tracy. He made it all look so easy. Or Marcello Mastroianni. Do you remember Federico Fellini's movie La Dolce Vita (1960)? Mastroianni steps right into the water in Rome's Trevi Fountain and walks through it to give a flower to Anita Ekberg. Beautiful scene.
- When Kurosawa [Akira Kurosawa] was in his eighties he said, "I'm not only thinking of my next film, but I'm thinking of the one after that." I met Kurosawa. I was at a small dinner party with him once, and we talked about the subject of retiring. He said to me "People like you and me should die on the movie set." I was honored that he included me in that sentence.
- [on what he looks for in a film project] The first thing you look for is emotion - you're moved by it. Then you can become intellectual. The third part is the business.
- [on At Play in the Fields of the Lord (1991)] Tom Waits wants to act but is not an actor, the only thing he can play is Tom Waits. Tom Berenger is a hollow barrel who thinks the part is okay if his looks are right, that he doesn't need to add anything from the inside. In Jack Nicholson's eyes you see everything, you know what he's thinking. You don't see anything with Berenger. But it was our fault, nobody obliged us to take Tom and Tom. Sometimes you make a film that the audience simply doesn't like.
- You win some, you lose some, of course. But you don't go in that way. You always think you got it, you're going to make a good picture. When it doesn't come off you feel terrible. You really feel terrible. You wanna know what you did wrong. You want to know how you could've made a better picture, and why you didn't make a better picture.
- [1997 interview] We're trying to make a picture of a book that we like called "Night's Lies," written by a Sicilian, Gesualdo Bufalino. It's about four guys in a dungeon in the 1850s who are members of a revolutionary group who tried to overthrow the king. They are trying to find out who their leader is, and they're all telling stories to each other and to the warden in the prison. You don't know what the truth is. It has a great idea and it's funny and also very serious, but it doesn't have a center you can come back to the way "English Patient" has the two love stories. We're trying to get the right screenwriter who can figure out the center of the book. Making a movie is a great adventure every time you start out, especially this, which would be on location in Italy, which I love.
- [2002 interview] We've optioned a book called "Waiting for the Barbarians" by a South African writer [J.M. Coetzee]. In this case, barbarians are those people outside that we may not see but they cause us to change our laws, maybe torture people and a lot of other things. They are in all forms of life, civilian life, and at companies looking for your job.
- [announcing his third collaboration with Milos Forman on Goya's Ghosts (2006)] Two films together and neither one bad. How could we not go on and tempt fate?
- [on the casting of Stellan Skarsgård in Goya's Ghosts (2006)] I remember that Milos and I were returning from Europe to America by plane. Milos was watching a movie, not a good one, one of the Exorcist installments [Exorcist: The Beginning (2004)], when he turned to me and said, "There's our Goya." And I said, "Where?" Milos pointed to Stellan Skarsgård on the screen. "I know him," I told Milos. He had a role in The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988) which I produced. I thought it was a great idea. Skarsgård is the kind of actor you remember not as Stellan Skarsgård but as the character he plays in each particular film. He's a marvelous actor.
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