A Quote by Mike Leigh

People have been very resistant to giving me more than the standard amount of money. So I keep making films on a similar scale. Which is fine, but also frustrating. — © Mike Leigh
People have been very resistant to giving me more than the standard amount of money. So I keep making films on a similar scale. Which is fine, but also frustrating.
I mean, money people are usually quite brisk, but mine aren't, and they keep on giving me spaces so that I've been able to go on and do plays and films.
How I'm portrayed in films has more to do with the filmmaking and what they need in the story than anything else. I'm the same person I've always been, I just get used in different ways according to the filmmakers' needs - which is fine with me; it makes for great films.
In this post-modern culture in which we live - where people question absolute truth - stories are resistant to platitudes; they're resistant to me making declarations of truth to them. A story can do that in kind of a Trojan-horse fashion.
I've been acting for many years now, and I find there's nothing I enjoy more than making films with my friends and people I like, who also are the funniest people around.
There's a standard pay scale for stunts. The more difficult the stunt, the more money involved. But if I'm the only stuntman who can do a particular gag, there's usually a little more in it for me.
When I said that something was going to cost a certain amount of money, I actually knew what I was talking about. The biggest problem that we were having on the financing front was people with lots of money saying "you need more money to make this film [Moon]," and us saying "no this is the first feature film we want to do it at a budget where we sort of prove ourselves at the starting end of making feature films; we can do this for $5 million." That is where the convincing part between me and Stuart came, we had to convince people with money that we could do it for that budget.
People like comfort; that's natural. But as for making money simply for the sake of making it, and giving yourself far more trouble and anxiety to gain it than you can ever get pleasure from it when it's gained, why, as for me, I'd rather sit still and cross my arms.
Making money has always been pretty easy for me, but today I don't need any more money. I still work, because money is important, but my work is more important than the money, now. And that's a very big difference. I just work because I enjoy my work.
Working in independent cinema is far more frustrating than mainstream because it is difficult to get money to make such films.
Hope. People want hope. We crave hope. We long for hope. Hope has been present since the very beginning. And almost in the worst situations of human history, you often find the greatest amount of hope. The very nature of the situation, the way stepped-on people created within them even more hope than when things were going fine. Hope has always been around.
I had to trick people into giving me money for my first film. Making a romantic comedy is easier and more expected from a woman than it is to make a drama about a Japanese warrior.
There's a level where the themes of a film are very relevant to me and also the idea of finding out how relevant one genre is to another. I think that westerns and samurai films and superhero films have a lot in common. It's just that the scale of the visuals in tentpole films can sometimes overwhelm the drama.
I'm very, very lucky to be a working actor, but I've also been careful. I don't just take anything. 'Durham County' came to me. You have to look at the quality of work you do, and 'Durham' set the standard. I wait for things that keep me really interested.
Films that score very high with test audiences generally tend to not be so great. But, there's a lot of money involved in making movies, and it's a way for people to reassure themselves, who have spent money, and it's also a way to work out how to market a movie.
I like to think I'm making films in the film business where movies are making enough numbers for the studios to let me keep working, but you also want those films to have content that makes you proud you made the film. That's not easy, but it's a fun puzzle to figure out.
I pay people very, very well - probably more than I have to. But that costs me less money in the long run because I'm not having to constantly train somebody. I pay them enough that they don't go seeking a higher scale at the next restaurant.
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