Here’s my philosophy in life: If there’s a fire, you put it out. If there’s a flood, you fill sandbags and you build a dike. You roll up your sleeves and you get to work.
Religions fulfill deep-seated psychological needs for people, and if you don’t get it from a specific religious doctrine, you’ll get it from the kind of films I like to make. A film like The Terminator is consciously meant to give a sense of empowerment to the individual.
I watched a couple of really bad directors work, and I saw how they completely botched it up and missed the visual opportunities of the scene when we had put things in front of them as opportunities. Set pieces, props and so on.
Hate is a disease, and in 1930 I became sick with hatred.
To convince people to back your idea, you’ve got to sell it to yourself and know when it’s the moment. Sometimes that means waiting. It’s like surfing. You don’t create energy, you just harvest energy already out there.
Nature’s not our enemy, it’s our sustenance; and we need it – and we need nature healthy for us to be healthy and to survive long term.
It took me a long time to realize that you have to have a bit of an interlanguage with actors. You have to give them something that they can act with.
The films that influenced me were so disparate that there’s almost no pattern.
If you want to move through a virtual reality it’s called a video game, it’s been around forever.
I was always fascinated by engineering. Maybe it was an attempt maybe to get my father’s respect or interest, or maybe it was just a genetic love of technology, but I was always trying to build things.
The magic doesn’t come from within the director’s mind, it comes from within the hearts of the actors.
I don’t look at scripts. I just write them.
I certainly didn’t think of myself as gifted. The standards for being gifted in my environment were if you were good in Little League or if you were good in football.
What are you gonna do, talk the alien to death?
God wears white flannels.
Tread softly upon the earth because the faces of the unborn look up at you.
I’m certainly not a fan of conversion when you could shoot the movie in 3-D.
The nation that leads in renewable energy will be the nation that leads the world.
If it was up to the studio, everything would be shot with a camcorder.
I don’t just want to be associated with a few good 3D movies and the audience is saying all of the other ones are crap.
Usually, when you go to a movie, your consciousness floats above the film. 3D sucks you in and makes it a visceral experience.