A Quote by James Wan

A lot of these types of films - the vigilante or revenge drama - were so popular in the '70s because there was a feeling in the culture of loss of control. — © James Wan
A lot of these types of films - the vigilante or revenge drama - were so popular in the '70s because there was a feeling in the culture of loss of control.
It would be flattering to call it a modern Dirty Harry, but I think this film deals more with the loss of his wife than the traditional revenge vigilante films.
Because revenge is a very known feeling in American culture, there's a certain element of an eye for an eye. There's the saying, 'Be careful what you wish for, you might get it.' When you wish for revenge, and you think you've gotten it, what happens then? Revenge is just a really good drive for drama and good action.
Because revenge is a very known feeling in American culture, theres a certain element of an eye for an eye. Theres the saying, 'Be careful what you wish for, you might get it'. When you wish for revenge, and you think you've gotten it, what happens then? Revenge is just a really good drive for drama and good action.
'Death Sentence' really is a throwback to the '70s style revenge drama with moments of action. It's like a contemporary 'Death Wish' with a much more thriller style storyline, but the action scenes I shot very much in the style of '70s films like 'The French Connection.'
I was a straight arrow, a control freak. I didn't do drugs or drink, and this was the '70s. I didn't like the loss of control. Which isn't exactly right, because I didn't know what happened when you did drugs.
Richard Donner made great movies. Seminal movies. The Academy, though, and we have to be careful here, should recognize popular films. Popular films are what make it all work. There was a time when popular movies were commercial movies, and they were good movies, and they had to be good movies. There was no segregation between good independent films and popular movies.
Each form of the acting is different. I think it keeps your mind active. TV, film and theater are different disciplines, as are independent films, opposed to studio films. There are differences in the size and the genre, or a period drama as opposed to a contemporary drama, or the types of characters.
I would not have been interested in doing just a revenge film simply because I have seen so many revenge films right from Clint Eastwood films to Amitabh Bachchan's 'Zanjeer', 'Sholay' and 'Ghayal' and various variants of them.
Professional wrestling in Europe is more of a sub-culture. It is not as popular as it is here in the United States. The people that were drawn to it were also people that were into sub-culture, hardcore sub-culture. It is basically an alternative scene that is sub-culture.
I'm really interested in mythology and folklore. I'm interested in moralities, why we're here, faith... all of these bigger questions that I think we can place in films that allow us to question and give us a safe place to feel. Those types of questions can pop up in all sorts of different types of films - drama, comedy, action movie.
One meaningful distinction between high and popular culture, is that there's way more good popular culture - because its standards of quality are more forgiving, because sobriety isn't its default mode, because there's so damn much of it.
When I started acting in the film industry when I was 16 years old, in 1980, I was going to all the revival theaters in Los Angeles. They were playing mostly films from the '60s and '70s, some from the early '20s and '30s, before that Hays commission. Those films did question things a lot, and there definitely was a switch in 1934. You can see very distinctly in 1934, it's harder to understand what the real culture was. Films made before 1934, you can really kind of see the racism, sexism, drug use, etc. that was going on at that time. And then it was all stopped.
There were a lot of people dreaming about making films, and they would finance maybe 6 films a year. Because they were funded by the government, the films sort-of had to deal with serious social issues - and, as a result, nobody went to see those films.
I'm a huge fan of the films of the '70s and even into the '80s, Sidney Lumet, all those films that used what was going on in people's lives as drama. And not only are you entertained, but hopefully have a greater understanding of your world coming out of it.
I'm learning a lot about the culture of weight loss. I didn't know there were bloggers out there who were proud to be fat.
For me, the stamp that I impose on stuff comes from the fact that in the '80s, when I was starting to write movies, I looked back to the '70s. So the films I enjoyed as a kid were the thrillers that came out of the '70s. Back then, you didn't have action movies; you had adventure films or thrillers.
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