Top 210 Quotes & Sayings by Martin Scorsese - Page 3

Always get to the set or the location early, so that you can be all alone and draw your inspiration for the blocking and the setups in private and quiet. In one sense, it's about protecting yourself; in another sense, it's about always being open to surprise, even from the set, because there may be some detail that you hadn't noticed. I think this is crucial. There are many pictures that seem good in so many ways except one: They lack a sense of surprise, they've never left the page.

I look for a thematic idea running through my movies and I see that it's the outsider struggling for recognition. I realize that all my life I've been an outsider, and above all, being lonely but never realizing it.

Violence is not the answer, it doesn’t work any more. We are at the end of the worst century in which the greatest atrocities in the history of the world have occurred... The nature of human beings must change. We must cultivate love and compassion.

I don't think there is any difference between fantasy and reality in the way these should be approached in a film. Of course if you live that way you are clinically insane.

You've got to love something enough to kill it.

I've been thrown out of schools and fired from jobs. I don't want to work. I can honestly say I haven't done an honest day's work in my life.

Watching a Kubrick film is like gazing up at a mountaintop. You look up and wonder, how could anyone have climbed that high?

I'm obsessed with New York. I just find it so remarkable. You really treasure this city when you go to different countries and you see that there is no mix. When you get back to the city, it's such an exciting place.

If you don’t like the films of Samuel Fuller , then you just don’t like cinema.

The more you see, especially being young, the more you see the past, the more you can draw upon that and the more you can make the present and the future. It's how you process the past and at oftentimes in the picture, there are references to certain imagery from certain pictures, and certain novels.

Music and film are inseparable. They always have been and always will be.

[David Lean's] images stay with me forever. But what makes them memorable isn't necessarily their beauty. That's just good photography. It's the emotion behind those images that's meant the most to me over the years. It's the way David Lean can put feeling on film. The way he shows a whole landscape of the spirit. For me, that's the real geography of David Lean country. And that's why, in a David Lean movie, there's no such thing as an empty landscape.

DAYS THAT I'LL REMEMBER is a lovingly assembled and beautifully written collection of conversations, observations, and memories of music, friendship, and days gone by. It's good to be back again with John Lennon, his beloved Yoko Ono, and his trusted chronicler and friend Jonathan Cott.

It’s also true that I might have never made Taxi Driver [1976] were it not for the success of Alice [Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, 1974]. The question of commercialism is a source of worry. Must one make a choice, must it be a matter of either setting your sights on winning an Academy Award and becoming a millionaire, or making only the movies you want to make and starving to death?

I'm often asked by younger filmmakers, 'Why do I need to look at old movies?' I've made a number of pictures in the last 20 years and the response I have to give them is that I still consider myself a student. The more pictures I've made in 20 years, the more I realize I really don't know. And I'm always looking for something or someone that I could learn from. I tell the younger filmmakers, and the young students, that do it like painters used to do—that painters do—study the old masters, enrich your palette, expand the canvas. There's always so much more to learn.

If you’re looking for the origins of film culture in America, look no further than Amos Vogel.

The tone of the picture and the atmosphere was in my head and in my blood in a way once I'd decided to make the picture. I had to find my way through that to choose, select, emphasise certain visual elements and sound.

I'm in a different chapter of my life. As time goes by and I grow older, I find that I need to just be quiet and think. There have been periods when I've locked myself away for days, but now it's different - I'm married and we have a daughter who is in my office the whole time.

I have a desire to tell stories. And I'm never quite satisfied.

You have to put yourself in a situation, a lifestyle, that makes you do the work. Even if it's a monastery.

That subject matter has never left me...The more you're in the material world, the more there is a tendency for a search for serenity and a need to not be distracted by physical elements that are around you.

The most important thing is the script.

There's a way that the force of disappointment can be alchemized into something that will paradoxically renew you.

Always get to the set or the location early, so that you can be all alone and draw your inspiration for the blocking and the setups in private and quiet.

You don't make up for your sins in church. You do it in the streets. You do it at home. The rest is bullshit and you know it.

I’m not interested in a realistic look, not at all, not ever. Every film should look the way I feel.

You've got to protect whatever creative talent you have left.

When everything is added up, the frequent blows weighted against the sporadic triumphs, this is I have to say not just a vocation, it's a great gift. But you also know this, for your work, for your passion, every day is a rededication. Painters, dancers, actors, writers, filmmakers. It's the same for all of you, all of us. Every step is a first step. Every brush stroke is a test. Every scene is a lesson. Every shot is a school. So, let the learning continue.

You have to remain strong. That's the kind of filmmaker I want to encourage. Orson Welles was the one who said, you know, you can learn anything you need to know about filmmaking- that's camera, sound, celluloid, video at this point- in four hours. It has nothing to do with anything. It has nothing to do with it... It has to do with what you want to say. If you feel you have something to say, you'll find that way to get it said, on film, and not let anyone or anything chip away at that or tarnish it, because it's something special and precious.

I'm not a Hollywood director. I'm an in spite of Hollywood director.

As a kid I watched the Academy Awards on television and always wanted one - or several - like one of my favorite directions, John Ford. He won six. On the other hand, Orson Welles, who's on the top of my list, didn't win any. Alfred Hitchcock didn't win any. Howard Hawks didn't win any.

The first element that I connected with was the emotion. Sorry, that's how it goes.

Actually, I was rock climbing on this film at 7 in the morning. It was quite unique! But in any event, the colour of the leaves disturbed me so we had to work on that. On the other hand, I didn't want to drench it in a kind of depressing tone.

In truly great films - the ones that people need to make, the ones that start speaking through them, the ones that keep moving into territory that is more and more unfathomable and uncomfortable - nothing's ever simple or neatly resolved. You're left with a mystery.

[Kubrick] was unique in the sense that with each new film he redefined the medium and its possibilities. But he was more than just a technical innovator. Like all visionaries, he spoke the truth. And no matter how comfortable we think we are with the truth, it always comes as a profound shock when we're forced to meet it face-to-face.

I do prefer doing more takes. There's something very organic that comes from the first take, but certain things come out. More details come out, in the way another actor says something. It's always this investigative process. You come further and further to the truth, the more you escalate. I like to do a lot of takes. I have a hunger for it. I like to see what there is to discover in a scene, that hasn't been thought of.

You can be born-again and believe in Jesus, believe in Jesus' ideas and try to live them out, without becoming totally intolerant of other people.

I prefer people who don't get caught, and if they do get caught, I prefer people who don't give in.

My films really have to be a part of a whole body of work that says something to me.

[Action's] a Western thing. We think of the hero going into battle, rebelling against a government or an oppressor, but [in KUNDUN] action is nonaction or what appears to be nonaction. That's a hard concept for Western audiences. . . . We wanted to show a kind of moral action, a spiritual action, an emotional action. Some people will pick up on it; some won't.

I always tell the younger filmmakers and students: Do it like the painters used to...Study they old masters. Enrich your palette. Expand the canvas. There's always so much more to learn.

I wouldn't presume to be God's point of view.

The problem with anger is that it's so consuming. You've got to take it easy on yourself at a certain point.

Sam Fuller and 'Shock Corridor' can only be conjured as a mantra. 'Shock Corridor' is a classic work of art - it's unique. It comes from the unique experience of being Sam Fuller and yes, there's always that element of 'Shock Corridor' hovering around the picture, but never specifically. In fact, I didn't even screen it because it's in us. It's in me anyway. It's in me. It was a way of conjuring up support just by saying the name, 'Shock Corridor,' as I was going to shoot. Poor Sam [Fuller]...

It is not the most brilliant that excel in film, but the most patient!

And so you try your best. Sometimes you go in with one thing, with one desire and come out with something else. In the case of 'The Aviator' it was to create a Hollywood spectacle, but by about the second or third week of shooting you just want to literally survive it. Because don't forget, I also go through the editing process too, and when the film is released I have to talk about it. So, I take all of that very seriously.

The storyboard for me is the way to visualise the entire movie in advance.

Basically, you make another movie, and another, and hopefully you feel good about every picture you make. And you say, 'My name is on that. I did that. It's OK.' But don't get me wrong, I still get excited by it all. That, I hope, will never disappear.

Being independent... is being innovative out of inspiration as well as necessity.

If Kubrick had lived to see the opening of his final film, he obviously would have been disappointed by the hostile reactions. But I'm sure that in the end he would have taken it with a grain of salt and moved on. That's the lot of all true visionaries, who don't see the use of working in the same vein as everyone else. Artists like Kubrick have minds expansive and dynamic enough to picture the world in motion, to comprehend not just where its been, but where it's going.

Sometimes God picks you up and tells you, "You've been messing around now. You're going to have to stop this, stop that, but I'll give you another chance." And you wonder why you're given another chance. It must be for something; it must be to celebrate life.

There are movies that change the whole way in which films are made, like Klute, where Gordon Willis’s photography on the film is so textured, and, they said, too dark.

We’re face to face with images all the time in a way that we never have been before... Young people need to understand that not all images are there to be consumed like fast food and then forgotten – we need to educate them to understand the difference between moving images that engage their humanity and their intelligence, and moving images that are just selling them something.

Orson Welles was a force of nature, who just came in and wiped the slate clean. And Citizen Kane is the greatest risk-taking of all time in film. I don’t think anything had even seen anything quite like it. The photography was also unlike anything we’d seen. The odd coldness of the filmmaker towards the character reflects his own egomania and power, and yet a powerful empathy for all of them--it’s very interesting. It still holds up, and it’s still shocking. It takes storytelling and throws it up in the air.

I tried for about two semesters in a preparatory seminary. But I was about 15 and didn't fully understand what a vocation means.

I don't know how else to tell the story except to utilise that vocabulary: the rain, the darkness, the mansions, the framing, etc, the lighting and that sort of thing.

I'm trying not to let the anger and the violence that erupt take over my life. I guess it comes with the growing process, I don't know. A little mellowing.

I was rather shaken by all the green trees. I always am. It gets me. I don't want to be funny about it but I am. I loved seeing all the westerns, but I had asthma and couldn't go anywhere, but I loved watching them in Technicolor and seeing the cowboys and the landscapes of Monument Valley and you'd see the forests of the Anthony Mann films and think, 'wow, that's fantastic', but I could never go there!

The creation of the island, or the impression of the island, as it changes in the mind of the character also came in to play... there was another very important collaborator, Rob Legato, on special visual effects. And then ultimately there's Thelma Schoonmaker, who keeps me focused during the editing of the picture.

Could you double-check the envelope?