A Quote by Park Chan-wook

I became a film director, but I wasn't successful with my first couple of films, so I had to turn to becoming a film critic to make a living. — © Park Chan-wook
I became a film director, but I wasn't successful with my first couple of films, so I had to turn to becoming a film critic to make a living.
My father was an engineer, .. But I found out that the film critics for the Stanford Daily got free passes for all the films. So I became first an assistant critic and then the main film critic. Those free passes changed my life.
When I started I had no knowledge of films whatsoever. I was an engineering major at Stanford. And I found out as a senior that they had two film critics on the Stanford Daily, and they got free passes to all the theaters in Palo Alto. So I thought, I'll do that, and I became a film critic. And then I became interested in films. But I had no time to study anything in that area because I was a senior, just finishing up as engineering.
I have gained a lot of confidence in my process of making films. It does't mean I'll make a successful film or even a good film, but I know how to make my film.
Me and Kirby are very collaborative and it changes from film to film. The first project we worked on together, Derrida, we co-directed. The last film Outrage, I was the producer and he was the director. This film was much more of a collaboration - he is the director and I am the producer - but this is a film by both of us.
Film’s thought of as a director’s medium because the director creates the end product that appears on the screen. It’s that stupid auteur theory again, that the director is the author of the film. But what does the director shoot-the telephone book? Writers became much more important when sound came in, but they’ve had to put up a valiant fight to get the credit they deserve.
Sony could have $50 million and a sound stage and A-list actors and never make the same film. The constraints on this film became the essence of this film, became the power of this film.
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.
You become a film critic because you're interested in film. I don't know whether knowing so much about cinema leads you to make better films, but it certainly can't hurt.
I really didn't want to be boxed into becoming a certain kind of film-maker - becoming the Maori story film-maker because I had made those short films.
I think films are about having a good time, so I don't know that there's a message. The message of a film is always what a critic writes, and the fun of a film or the emotion of a film is what the audience feels.
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.
I didn't start out my directorial career with a dance film, as I knew people thought a choreographer will easily make a dance film. And even with a non-dance film, I had delivered a successful film.
I wanted to be a playwright in college. That's what I was interested in and that's what I was moving toward, and then I had the lucky accident of falling in love with film. I was 19 or 20 that I realized films are made by people. Shooting digitally became cheaper and better. You couldn't make something that looked like a Hollywood film, but you could make something through which you could work out ideas. I was acting, but I was also conceiving the plots and operating the camera when I wasn't onscreen. I got very unvain about film acting, and it became a sort of graduate school for me.
Normally as a director, you do look at other films and things that are relevant. But with this film, it became impossible because I became so aware of the camera placement.
Having a couple of films that were successful internationally has made the film community aware of the films coming out of Greece.
We made 'Mickey and the Bear' with barely any money with a first-time director, a first-time director of photography, and a crew who had just graduated from NYU film school. We were all very much in this together for the first time. There's no famous actor or big explosions. It's not a Marvel movie. I thought nobody was going to see this film.
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