Top 150 Quotes & Sayings by Jason Blum
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American producer Jason Blum.
Last updated on December 23, 2024.
What I loved about 'War Dogs' was the fact that the tone - turning that story into a spectacular two hour ride is just such a complicated thing to do.
I think being snobby about the kind of storytelling people do, it just irks me. It irks me. And in fact, it's one of the things that drives me to make as many horror movies as I do.
Most people who've had a big hit movie like 'Paranormal Activity,' the next thing they say is, 'I want to make a $100 million movie.' I have no interest in making more expensive movies.
When there's a great horror movie, people are like, 'Horror's back!' And when there's a series of not so good ones, 'Horror's dead.' I think it's all about the quality. When there are one or two good horror movies in a row, people come out interested again.
I think the location is almost as important as casting the leads of the movie. The location on 'The Purge' was crucial to that movie working.
As an entrepreneur, one of my biggest struggles is that you have to focus, but you also have to expand.
It's really hard to make an original movie of any kind that succeeds in the theatrical market place, in the wide release market place.
The first thing I learned as a producer is that you have very little control over the life of a project. Anything can stall a film from financing to scheduling to casting. Things fall apart all the time. Don't waste time on something that just won't get made. Try to have as many projects going at one time as you can handle.
I do want to grow our company, so the way I've been doing that is moving 'scary' to different things.
When I was a kid, I really loved game shows. For whatever reason, I was fascinated with them and watched them a ton.
Personally, I love books, and I am interested in the notion that stories are told better in different media depending on the story.
When DVD disappeared but before digital distribution came on strong, there were a few years where a movie that didn't get theatrical would just be gone.
I liked stuff like 'Halloween,' but I wasn't a horror fanatic until I was in my 30s and then made 'Paranormal Activity.' Now, having a company, I can't imagine doing anything else. But it took me a while to find my love for it.
Ryan Murphy and I share our love of horror and musicals. I think those things somehow go together.
I love South By because people are more relaxed here, and people are a little more off guard. They say things and react more freely than Sundance or Cannes. I love the feel of this festival.
YouTube is found footage. It's here to stay, and people will always come up with new concepts that will make sense for found footage.
People look down on it, but I love the community of horror. Writers and directors are a tight group of people, and we help and support each other.
It's easy to get a theatrical release that shows in one theater for a week. But there's no advertising, and no one sees the movie. It's hard to get a real theatrical release. The distribution of independent films is, to me, extraordinarily frustrating.
I really love 'Poltergeist.' I think that's a great, terrific movie. I did really love the first 'Friday the 13th.' I thought that was such a crazy movie.
There are so many factors that go into having a successful movie.. too many that you can't control.
I'm a big believer in creating parameters for creativity. I think parameters make people more creative. So that starts with my budgets. I only do low budget movies, and I think that makes the movies better.
I think there's room for people to love 'Transformers' and love 'Insidious.' They coexist in a happy way; in other words, my movies wouldn't exist if 'Transformers' didn't exist, because they're an alternative to that. They're not better or worse, they're just different.
My easiest judgment for a script is 'do I want to keep reading it?'
For some reason, people value being scared less than they value laughing.
I couldn't stand it. It was what I thought I always wanted. I was there every day in the trenches, and I hated everything about that job. But what I loved - and what I got from 'The Tooth Fairy' - was to see how studio movies were released.
The minute I was told what to do at any age, I did the opposite. Hopefully I'll do that for the rest of my life.
'Paranormal Activity' was the first of our independently made/studio-released films. It was also the ultimate low-budget high-concept movie, which is what we are always looking for. 'Paranormal Activity' was the genesis of our model, of which I am so proud.
I never wanted to get paid by the hour. If I was going to do more work than another guy, I wanted to get paid more.
I found that a lot of people ridiculed contemporary art. I decided I wanted to be involved in art everybody could understand.
I think it's frightening for all of us to contemplate that there's more to the universe than just us, in whatever form it takes, that there are higher forces at work, and to me, that's always a scary notion.
I love Hitchcock movies. I took a Hitchcock class in college, so I saw all his movies. I wrote papers on his movies.
The one thing I am very strict about is that I don't like spending a lot of money on movies because the more money you spend, I think the worse that they get.
You know how on movie sets there are specific chairs for each person? I hate that. We don't have names on our chairs. We have five chairs. Anyone can sit on them. I think the idea of names on chairs on a set is terrible. It's so dumb. So we got rid of that.
I read an interview where someone said, 'It's a shame that anyone can make a movie now,' and I feel the exact opposite.
I try not to put pressure on filmmakers to come up with a big scare at the beginning. I think that helps let the audience settle in and get to know the people they're about to spend 90 minutes with. Once the scarier stuff happens, it's scarier because of that.
I think if you went to a studio and pitched the first 'Insidious,' it never would have gotten made because it was so offbeat.
Rotten Tomatoes is the best thing that happened to the movie business because it means you have to make good movies.
Blumhouse Books is not an outlet for us to mine intellectual property for movies and TV.
The key to a good horror movie is what happens between the scares. The scares aren't the tricky part. If you're involved in what's going on in between, the scare is going to trick you. If you're not, the best scare in the world will not be scary.
I didn't grow up loving horror.
When you work in low budgets, you can do weird stuff.
I started out producing theatre in New York.
Working with kids is always hard because you have to have very limited hours. They have to have breaks, and they have to have a tutor, and they have to have a lot of - good things! But it makes it hard to shoot.
Ethan Hawke is not a horror movie fan, but he's a really good friend of mine, and I finally cajoled him into doing 'Sinister.' Later, he said one of the reasons he was really resistant to doing a horror movie is he thought it'd be really scary on set.
We make a lot of movies, and we make them fast.
When you have less risk, you have more fun. You can take risks. It's much easier to take risks when there's less money on the line.
I'm proud of 'Sinister' because Scott and Cargill did a great job on the movie, and I set up a framework for them to make what they wanted to make. They gave me the idea, and I figured out how to get it out into the world.
We make movies for the cineplex. They're designed for wide release. They're designed to be seen by a lot of people and eventually make money.
We're offered bigger, larger budget movies to produce a lot, and we don't do them. That's not to say there aren't exceptions: there are a few exceptions, but I try and stick by the rules that produce what I think is the highest quality, most innovative work and try and let the rules go that make us feel like we're retreading.
There are a lot of parallels between doing a sequel and doing low budget movies, which is they give creative parameters. As a creative person myself, I work better with parameters as opposed to anything goes.
'Paranormal Activity' had fifty versions because it was $250 to reshoot. We'd screen it, see one thing wrong, shoot for an hour, fix it, and then screen it again. You don't have to be disciplined about it. On a regular movie, you have to screen it and think of every problem, reshoot for three days and solve every problem, and then you're done.
I've grown to love it, but I'm not like a lot of other people who were always crazy horror fans like Eli Roth or Quentin Tarantino.
Occasionally I'll be a producer for hire on a larger budget movie, but with Blumhouse Pictures, we mainly focus on micro-budget, under-$5-million-dollar movies. That's what we're in business to do, and that's what we're in business to make.
I think because Skype is becoming so much more prevalent, and you're looking at someone else on a screen, it's going to work its way into movies and TV shows in all different ways, which I think is really cool.
I don't believe in ghosts or paranormal activity, but one time I think I saw - I might have seen - no, I think I did see a ghost.
Success stems from the producer creating the optimal conditions for the filmmaker's own creative process. Not from steering the filmmaker through a one-size-fits-all approach.
In every art form, nothing exists in a bubble. It exists because of what came before it. A lot of bricks were laid. I think if it weren't for 'The Purge,' 'Get Out' wouldn't resonate as a mainstream movie. You push on the taste of the audience, in a way, get them used to something, and then you keep pushing on it.
I love going to see musicals. That was one of the major reasons why losing the chance to produce 'La La Land' was so painful.
I love musicals. I love horror movies and I love art movies.
One of my favorite things about making horror movies is, the first time you screen them in front of an audience, it's very fun to hear people audibly react to the work you put into a movie. You don't wonder at the end of the movie whether it worked or not.
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