Top 75 Quotes & Sayings by Michael Cimino
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American director Michael Cimino.
Last updated on April 14, 2025.
A film reflects who you are as a building reflects the soul of its architect. I think what you feel and what you think and what you are is what the film is. It's not for me to talk about.
Movie-making ain't for sissies.
Every good war film, if you want to use that phrase - I don't think it's a good phrase, but if you want to use that phrase - every good film, a first-rate film about war, is an anti-war movie.
Would you ask Picasso to explain 'Guernica?' Would you ask Nabokov to explain 'Lolita?' Would you ask Tolstoy about 'War and Peace?' No, you wouldn't dare.
All one has to do is look at old footage of the firebombing of Dresden during World War II and think of the people beneath those bombs. It's horrific.
Family politics are worse than world politics. That's all I can say. You don't get to choose your family; you get to choose your friends. Your family is imposed upon you.
They've said everything about me that they could: racist, Marxist, rightist, homophobic, sex change - I don't know what else they could come up with.
Most people I knew had been crippled by their educations. Some were even dying spiritually.
'Leaving Las Vegas' is a relationship; 'Dead Man Walking' is a relationship, and they're very contained movies. They're compressed and not in wide open spaces all over the place.
Being infamous is not fun. It becomes a weird occupation in and of itself.
Encountering a real place enhances the performances of actors in subtle ways and changes the spiritual texture of the film.
You couldn't make 'Heaven's Gate' today. Even were you to quadruple the resources to make the movie, you couldn't make it because the people don't exist.
On a movie, you often work fourteen-, sixteen-hour days, six days a week, for six months. It is so easy to let up because of fatigue.
Working-class, blue-collar guys who volunteered for Vietnam were ascribed certain political beliefs. It's time that this was redressed. It had nothing to do with politics. Once these men got to Vietnam, it was a matter of survival.
It's one of the wonderful things that the Academy does - a talented person comes along like Mira Sorvino, and it elevates them up to stardom.
If you can't stop somebody from working and making movies that you hate, what's the next best thing? Destroy them personally.
'Deer Hunter' is a movie; it is not an attempt to write history.
A film maker's energy and creativity don't have to end when he turns over his film.
I don't make movies to make a point; I make movies to tell stories about people.
What we forget is that the Academy is a star-maker, or it reinforces the stardom of people.
I cut 'Deer Hunter' myself.
I never second-guess myself.
The Indians believe all things have spirit - even the hail that comes from the sky is spirit. If you believe that, which I implicitly do, everything is alive.
War is war. Vietnam is no different from the Crusades.
It's one of the things that movies do offer you, despite all of their hardships - they offer you moments of transcendence.
I have a very simple definition of a good movie: a good movie makes you forget you're watching a movie.
I have no personal life.
There have been so many false things written about me by people who don't know me.
Making movies is controlled anarchy, chaos.
It was just - I mean, 6,000 people giving you a standing ovation is quite an experience.
Because people don't see me around a lot, I'm the source of all sorts of rumour.
I wish I was making movies back in the days when John Ford made movies and you were a director under contract to a studio. John Ford had years when he made three movies in a year.
All of those years, I felt like 'Heaven's Gate' was a beautiful, fantastically colored balloon tied to a string fastened to my wrist, so the balloon could never fly.
I would never suggest that the geography or visual environment of the film is more important than what's going on with the people, but it's a major factor in getting the right tone. Certainly, it influences the actors tremendously.
I love to scout locations.
I've had enough rejection for 33 years. I don't need more.
If you don't get it right, what's the point?
There is always that need to feel that you're doing your possible best.
I felt the need to unlearn my formal education.
Even the details of a rifle, which are nothing but mechanical, if they are made carefully, with attention, become beautiful, satisfying.
When the rich kids got together, the most we ever did was cross against a red light.
I've published a couple of short novels in France that I didn't want to publish in English because I loved the characters too much to subject them to American critics who were not exactly favorable toward my work.
When I was fifteen, I spent three weeks driving all over Brooklyn with a guy who was following his girlfriend.
Nobody lives without making mistakes.
I don't believe in defeat.
I'm a frustrated would-be architect who stumbled into the would-be business of making movies.
I have no interest in making a 'Vietnam' film, no interest in making a direct political statement.
We all want to experience that in our lives - a moment when we're two feet off the ground - and making movies gives you that opportunity. It comes and it goes so fast that it's unreal, but it does happen.
Friendship and sentiment and the giving of one's words are very important.
Journalism is not writing.
I wouldn't look pretty as a woman.
What distinguishes Vilmos Zsigmond from other cinematographers is, of course, talent but, more, physical stamina. You just can't be great without it.
Does anyone remember who shot Kubrick's movies? Do you remember who shot David Lean's movies? No one remembers who shot 'Dr. Strangelove' or 'Barry Lyndon.'
It's very important to follow your instincts because, beyond what you know exists or what you're told exists in a given area, your intuition plays a big part in finding something special.
There's a need to dig up the past and analyze it.
There's nothing good that comes out of war. It's simply hell on earth, and people survive, and people don't.
I am not a preacher; I'm a reacher.
Who cares about seeing 10,000 helicopter assaults? That's spectacle.
I think 'American Sniper' is anti-war. It demonstrates the agony of the decision-making that goes on.
I don't dispute the accounts of My Lai 4, but I think that anyone who is a student of the war, or anyone who was there, would agree that anything you could imagine happening probably happened.
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