A Quote by Nicolas Winding Refn

I very much enjoy my freedom creatively but I also would love to make one of those big Hollywood films that costs a lot of money and has a lot of people running around with cell phones and all that insanity.
People are very protective of their cell phones, how it's used, where it's used and how much it costs. It has become a very personal issue for a whole lot of people in this country.
In making a movie, you're part of a big machine. Even in a small movie there are still so many people involved in the process, and it costs so much money to make. There is so much more invested in it for a lot of different people, so much money is sunk into it that they usually want some guarantee or promise that it's going to be able to do something on a financial level. There's just a lot more messing with you in film. I love movies and I love to watch movies and being a part of the whole film experience.
Money solves a lot of problems and when you don't have money, you've got to do all this other stuff to solve the problem. It's very hard. I would love to have not necessarily a studio because then you lose so much control but I would love to have decent independent financing where I have the freedom and I have the money to do it right, to not be asking people to work for free or to work for half the rate and not ask those favors again and again because I now owe all these people back who've helped me.
I think that there's a lot more freedom in the low budget, the independent films where, unfortunately, you don't have the money, necessarily, to get the orchestras in there to play a lot of stuff. But, you have a lot more freedom, very often.
The world looks at China as a big place with a lot of people, a good place to make money. And because so many Chinese families send their kids abroad to study, they are familiar with foreign cultures, so Hollywood films are very successful in China.
Don't forget, a lot of people want that to happen because they make a lot of money by taking money out of this country. Those deals [like NAFTA] are very good for a lot of people.
I appreciate it if I make a Chinese film. And if there is an opportunity to make a Hollywood film, I will take it - especially because, as you probably know, in Hollywood, even today, there are not a lot of big roles for Asian performers. So it is a great opportunity. It is possible to make films that people everywhere enjoy. I travel quite a lot. I don't really feel like when I am in China, I am a Chinese person and when I'm here, I'm a foreigner. I don't feel that kind of difference anymore. In the past I did. Not anymore. I feel quite at home everywhere. The whole world is my home.
One thing I love is that I don't have a lot of people running around Hollywood saying 'I've had her,' because guys love to talk, especially about celebrities.
I remember when I was working on Mission: Impossible 2, John Woo said, "In Hong Kong, there's not much money and a lot of time. In Hollywood, a lot of money, not much time." Personally I'd prefer not much money, a lot of time.
It costs a lot of money to deliver newsprint. It's so much easier to do it through the air, Internet, radio, television. The second easiest thing is to do it through the mail. But when you have to take something heavy and put it on someone's doorstep, that costs a lot of money.
I want to be involved in things I can be really proud of. There's a lot of bad films being made and I don't understand how they got the money for it. That said, there's a lot of bad telly, but there's also a lot of very high quality that is something I'd be much more proud of than a mediocre film.
The difference between working on Asian and American films is in the producer and director; everyone has their own style. But, Hollywood has a lot more money; they can spend a lot on films, and time. In Europe, there's a small budget and thinking about commercial. Only budget and taste is different between there and Hollywood.
Luckily I had just finished a Marvel film so I was already in a training mentality and then this movie happened and I was really just trying to focus on like as much cardio as possible because in this film I do a lot of running and a lot of running in 100 degree heat in Austinit was like a sprintit was very much like all one shot running around, sprinting. So I had to build up my cardio to be able to get to that place and also not to like, die.
One metaphor for how we are living is that you see so may people with cell phones. In restaurants, walking, they have cell phones clamped to their to heads. When they are on their cell phones they are not where their bodies are...they are somewhere else in hyperspace. They are not grounded. We have become disembodied. By being always somewhere else we are nowhere.
We've gotten to a point where it costs so much money to make a movie that directors and filmmakers feel they have to make sure that everybody gets it. And that's an unfortunate development, I think, in a lot of narratives floating around in the film industry.
The Carpetbaggers was the first big money I made. Money gave me a lot of freedom, but no matter how much you make there's always somebody chasing your ass for more.
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