I was never sloppy with other people’s money. Only my own. Because I figure, well, you can be.
If you’re not allowed to experiment anymore for fear of being considered self-indulgent or pretentious or what have you, then everyone’s going to just stick to the rules – there’s not going to be any additional ideas.
I’ve been failing for, like, ten or eleven years. When it turns, it’ll turn. Right now I’m just trying to squeeze through a very tight financial period, get the movie out, and put my things in order.
Listen, if there’s one sure-fire rule that I have learned in this business, it’s that I don’t know anything about human nature.
Wine is so much more than a beverage. It’s a romance, a story, a drama-all of those things that are basically putting on a show.
Time is the lens through which dreams are captured.
Although knowledge of structure is helpful, real creativity comes from leaps of faith in which you jump to something illogical. But those leaps form the memorable moments in movies and plays.
So give yourself that chance to put together the 80, 90 pages of a draft and then read it very in a nice little ceremony, where you’re comfortable, and you read it and make good notes on it, what you liked, what touched you, what moved you, what’s a possible way, and then you go about on a rewrite.
Whom God wishes to destroy, He first makes successful in show business.
I have always credited the writer of the original material above the title: Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, or John Grisham’s The Rainmaker. I felt that I didn’t have the right to Francis Coppola’s anything unless I had written the story and the screenplay.
I made this movie for $40,000, which was this little black-and-white horror film called Dementia 13, which we made in about nine days.
I probably have genius. But no talent.
A director is the ringmaster of a circus that’s inventing itself.
The essence of cinema is editing.
I was interested in the idea of succession – showing a father and a son both in their own time and drawing a contrast.
I always think upon Lee Strasberg with warmth, and reviewing his wisdom is a pleasure.
Work on nothing less than epic scale.
Most directors have one masterpiece by which they are known. Kurosawa has at least eight or nine.
My talent is that I just try and try and try and try again and little by little it comes to something...
Death is what makes life an event.