Top 148 Quotes & Sayings by Paul W. S. Anderson - Page 2

Pompeii was an incredibly corrupt city. Pompeii was the Las Vegas of the Roman Empire.

I've always tried to do camera moves that I felt were immersive. So I think, as a filmmaker, my style of filmmaking is very well-suited to 3-D anyway, so it's not like I'm having to change a huge amount of the way I shoot to work in 3-D.

A pivotal moment for me as a filmmaker was when I saw 'Total Recall,' the Arnold Schwarzenegger version, which was the first movie I saw in America.

'Death Race' was a very modern action movie, and it used all of those modern action techniques with lots of hand-held camera, lots of punchy zooms, and lots of quick movements and quick cuts.

I don't make films for critics, and I'm not particularly interested in what they have to say, and they don't have a bearing on my audiences.

Pompeii is taught at schools in England, and, for a young boy, the combination of the Roman Empire and a volcano was irresistible.

It's an unwritten rule that when you move to California and you're an English person, you have to drive a convertible, and you have to bank with Wells Fargo because they have a stage coach on their bank card.

I'm definitely of a generation that's very influenced by videogames.

It's very rare, in a movie franchise, where you have the same creative team behind the camera and in front of the camera, pretty much, for the entire growth of the franchise.

One of the strengths of the 'Resident Evil' game franchise is that they keep changing it up.

When I made my first film, 'Shopping,' the reviews were incredibly snooty. They said things like, 'Jude Law is too pretty for the role,' and that's why I don't respect the British press. That kind of small-minded thing doesn't consider what people like.

I'm a big 3-D convert.

I don't read reviews anymore.

I saw 'Spacehunter 3-D.' It gave me a headache.

I think 'Death Race 2000' is a classic, but it's a classic from the 1970s, and I think it's a particular kind of drive-in-exploitation movie satire masterpiece, and it was very much a movie of its time.

Every time I go to Japan and meet Capcom, it is like going to see the Umbrella Corporation. You ask them things, and they won't give you a straight answer about anything.

I've always seen myself as a populist filmmaker.

I think one of the joys of disaster movies is not knowing who's going to live and who's going to die.

When I started working as a writer-director, that's when he became Paul Thomas Anderson and I became Paul W.S. Anderson. Neither of us can write and direct an American movie under the name Paul Anderson.

I think, quite often, filmmakers kind of think so much about what the franchise will be and sometimes can neglect to put their efforts into the movie that they are actually making.

I love 3D, and I'm very upset about the way it's being treated and thrown away by Hollywood in this kind of horrible grab for the money with all these bad 3D movies and terrible 3D conversions.

If you're going to ask people to pay a premium price, you have to deliver a premium product. Not enough 3D movies have delivered on that promise. People got tired of it, and that's why they started to turn their back on 3D.

If you work with a subject matter beloved by a hardcore fan base, then there's going to be a huge amount of discussion of what you've got wrong or right. In some ways, you can never please overly obsessive fans; it's just impossible. That doesn't mean to say they're not going to go to the movie and thoroughly enjoy it.

Movies are not an art form where you get to kind of sit in your art gallery and paint, you know? You don't do that. You're spending a lot of somebody else's money.

You can film the most exciting car chase and the most exciting stunts, but if you don't care about the person inside the car, and you don't care about their predicament, you're not really going to care about the action, either.

I always refer to the first 'Resident Evil' movie as 'the little movie that could' because, at the time, it was kind of unfashionable to do video game movies.

'Predator,' you know, was John McTiernan absolutely at the top of his game.

Growing up, I wanted to make the kind of movies that would play in a multiplex, and those were the kinds of movies I ended up making.

'Aliens' was a brilliant movie, but you still wanted to see the Alien come to Earth.

If you're going to make a horror movie, it doesn't get any better than 'Alien,' and if you're going to make an action movie, it really doesn't get any better than 'Aliens.'

Having made a real 3D movie, you realize that, right from the production design, you're designing sets that complement the 3D. You're designing interactive elements, like rain or smoke - all this particulate matter in the air enhances the 3D. But if you're shooting in 2D, you don't know about that.

I guess it seemed like a natural thing to set 'AvP' in the world of the Alien, rather than the world of the Predator. I always liked the idea of it being on earth.

If you make just hardcore horror, there's a limited audience for that. Whereas if it's horror mixed with action, I think you kinda broaden your potential fanbase.

Honestly, I don't think anyone confuses me with Wes Anderson. He's in his own terrific universe, but not the kind anyone would mistake for mine.

I grew up in England, and at the time, cinema was very heavy arthouse cinema, and there was no one making movies that were designed to be in multiplexes.

I very much see 'Resident Evil' as my franchise that I kicked, screaming, into life.

No one rocks a heavy machine gun like Michelle Rodriguez.

Sleep is a outmoded concept. It's best not to think about sleep.

I guess the way I shoot things is slightly influenced by the way videogames are cut and shot.

'AVP' is not trying to be 'Alien' or 'Aliens,' and it's not trying to be 'Predator.' Those are genius movies.

I really believe in 3-D. I really think it is the wave of the future for cinema.

What makes a mockery of a lot of these 3D conversions, where they're shot in 2D and converted to 3D. Having laid a real 3D movie, you realize that it's right in the production design. You design sets that enhance the 3D and you design interactive elements, like the rain or smoke. If you're shooting 2D, you don't know about that.

When you're writing it's a very solitary job. It's you and your word processor and a cup of tea. It's nice- that again, is another nice thing about being able to do commercials is, you can get out of the house and chase high speed cars around for a few days and then by the time you go back, you're kind of re-infused to write.

3D really altered the way I shot the movie completely, and it was exciting because, after 20 years of filmmaking, I felt like I was making my first movie, all over again.

Oh, yeah. A big part of my job is drinking martinis when I work in advertising.

Every movie is a commitment of a year or a year and a half. Commercials are much faster than that because they're much more contained. You can get in and out really fast, and you do a piece of work the you see the end result very quickly.

I went for a more classical approach to filmmaking with lots of dolly, track and cranes, and slightly slower, more choreographed fight moves, so you get more fight moves in one take.

One of the reasons why Resident Evil is a very successful video game franchise, much more so than a lot of others that have fallen by the wayside, is that they have constantly evolved.

I think, as a filmmaker, my style of filmmaking is very well-suited to 3-D anyway, so it's not like I'm having to change a huge amount of the way I shoot to work in 3-D. I think you could probably dimensionalize some of my movies and they would make very good 3-D films.

I think 3-D across the board both in a home format and cinema is, it's going to be very big.

I find it terribly distracting in movies when people do accents, I must say, unless it's terribly serious and the story is rooted in South Africa and you're doing a South African accent. But in period movies I think nothing can be more distracting than people doing accents.

Death Race was a very modern action movie and it used all of those modern action techniques with lots of hand-held camera, lots of punchy zooms, and lots of quick movements and quick cuts. In 3D, I didn't want to do that anymore.

When people see what real 3D looks like, they'll go, "Oh, that's why I spend an extra $5 a cinema ticket. That's worth it!"

For me, it's a multitude of things. In the modern world, there's a real genuine fear of loss of individuality and I think the undead speak to that. I also think the idea of the dead coming back to life, and this unstoppable foe that just keeps coming and coming, but rather slowly just chases you, is a real primal fear. It's like a fear of claustrophobia, heights or water.

Recently, I've been loving Monster Hunter! A film conversion is currently in planning.

It's a very different experience shooting in 3-D because the camera rigs are so large. Everything we've become accustomed to in the last ten years as filmmakers, which is cameras getting smaller and smaller and you can just throw them on your shoulder and stick them in a car and do whatever you want, you can't do any of that now. You're forced to put things on dollies and track and cranes.

I had the opportunity to work with Aliens and Predators when Resident Evil 2 was being made and it was for two different studios. It was for Fox and Sony. They don't care about one another. They just want their movies. So it was very difficult to delay one and... So I had to make a very painful decision to kind of step away from directing the second movie and with the third movie it was the same.

The idea of doing a period movie, some people say, "Isn't it odd that you're doing a period movie? That's a change of pace for you." And, I'm like, "Not really." When you're doing a science fiction movie, it's almost exactly the same.

My approach has always been to put 100% into the movie I'm making right now. I think sometimes filmmakers put too much thought into the grand franchise they're going to build. And guess what? If the first movie doesn't work there is no franchise, so I'm always concentrated on making the best, best possible movie right now.

The cameras were a little twitchy, and you'd get less footage and less set-ups every day. The interesting thing about it was that you just composed images in a completely different way because we had big 3D monitors on set, and you'd wear the glasses and see the image in 3D.