A Quote by Irwin Winkler
I really woke up one morning and said, you know, 'I haven't seen a good film about the American Revolution. And all the ones I have seen haven't been successful, but I'm going to make a successful one.' Well, I wasn't able to do that.
Related Quotes
I met Michael Snow and Stan Brakhage the second day after I arrived, you know. I had never seen or heard of Brakhage. For me, it was a revolution, because I was well educated in film, but American-style experimental film was known to me in the abstract, and I had seen practically nothing. I had seen a film then that Noël Burch had found and was distributing called Echoes of Silence. It was a beautiful film, three hours long. It goes forever and it was in black and white, very grainy, and I saw that film and I thought...it was not New Wave. It was really a new concept of cinema.
We tend to look at successful athletes and make them almost bigger than life. I have seen many young men who have achieved greatness. I have also seen those who have come up a little short of their potential. I do know that those who succeed have been able to recognize within themselves the potential to do something well and then work hard to prepare themselves for that eventual opportunity. Others wait for the opportunity to come and then start to work, thus coming up a little short.
Martin Scorsese was one of the few who had not been an assistant. Most of the guys had been an assistant and worked their way up. But I had seen an underground picture he had made in New York, a black-and-white film. I had done a picture for American International, about a Southern woman bandit, the Ma Barker story, and it was very successful, and I had left to start my own company, and they wanted me to make another one.
You want the film to be critically successful - you certainly want the film to be financially successful so that you can...well, because that's how movies like this are made, you know, they need to make money. But as a director, you can only make the movie that you want to make.
If you're going to make a film about rage in 2018, 2017... If you're going to make a film about revenge and anger, I feel like that has to be a film about women. I don't really want to watch a film about angry men. I've seen way too many of those.
It has been said that a Scotchman has not seen the world until he has seen Edinburgh; and I think that I may say that an American has not seen the United States until he has seen Mardi Gras in New Orleans.
So it was a really pleasant surprise when [Independence Day] turned out to be a successful film. I don't know if you've heard that they're going to be re-releasing it next Fourth of July in 3-D. I've actually only seen it once, and it was in Hawaii, in a little theater in Oahu shortly after it was released. But Roland Emmerich is a really smart guy, and he makes really fun movies to watch.
I've seen him be successful throwing the football his sophomore year, I've seen that. I've seen him react through adversity, I have seen that. I'd never seen him react to a new system because we didn't have one. I'd say that'd be the most impressive thing.
A lot of the people who have been on 'American Idol' have unfortunately not been very successful after the show is over. I would be one of the most successful contestants to not make it to the Top 12. So that would be a good statistic to throw into the show. It's what you make of it.
It's quite interesting, looking back at the first one [film about Harry Potter], nobody knew whether or not it was going to be successful as a film. The books were of course already very successful, but that's happened before, where the books were successful and the films weren't at all. But it turned out that they were.
The way you set up for a sequel is by having a successful film. The focus is on making a successful film, and making a film that travels around the world, and that people enjoy and have fun with, and that people are able to escape with.
Everyone is really afraid of getting out there and not being good. That's the challenge: To be afraid and know people are staring at you and know you might not do all that well, but you do it anyway. What singles out the successful athlete from the ones who never make it past a plateau, it that successful athletes risk failure, even though they are terrified.
I'm pretty lazy. My wife always says, "you're the laziest, most successful Olympian I've ever seen." How does that make sense? Honestly, if I have downtime, I'm really, really good at not doing anything.
There are so many great actors, but I really have a lot of respect for Johnny Depp. I've seen a lot of movies with him in it and, even if it's a film that wasn't as successful as you thought it would be, I've never seen him put in a bad performance. My favorite actors from history have to be Steve McQueen and James Dean.
In 2013, I had to do 'The Wright Stuff' on about an hour's sleep. I was asked, 'What do you make of the situation in Mali?' and I said, 'Well, I've not seen the film but I know the dog dies in the end.' They were talking about the civil war, and the whole audience took an inward breath. I thought, 'Should I not have revealed the end of the film?'
They've seen me make decisions, they've seen me under trying times, they've seen me weep, they've seen me laugh, they've seen me hug. And they know who I am, and I believe they're comfortable with the fact that they know I'm not going to shift principles or shift positions based upon polls and focus groups.
Related Authors
Declan Donnelly Quotes
English
Producer
Ekta Kapoor Quotes
Indian
Producer
Gauri Khan Quotes
Indian
Producer
J. Michael Straczynski Quotes
American
Producer
James Wan Quotes
Australian
Producer
Jason Blum Quotes
American
Producer
Jimmy Iovine Quotes
American
Producer
Julie Plec Quotes
American
Producer
Noah Hawley Quotes
American
Producer
Noel Edmonds Quotes
English
Producer
Paul Heyman Quotes
American
Producer
Roger Ross Williams Quotes
American
Producer
Samuel Goldwyn Quotes
American
Producer
Shonda Rhimes Quotes
American
Producer
Travis Knight Quotes
American
Producer
Troy Carter Quotes
American
Producer