A Quote by Ridley Scott

There's nothing really original. Alien was a B-movie. Five directors passed on it before me. Because I was into Heavy Metal, I read it, and thought, "Wow, I want to do this." I was on a plane to Hollywood in 22 hours. It was a B-movie and was elevated to an A-plus movie by sheer good taste.
You never want to have a movie be derivative, because that's the worst if you ask me. I always want to be in original material, or an original idea, or an original vision, rather than a rehash of some other movie.
John Logan was kind of wrapping up - "Well, thanks for coming in..." - and I thought, "Oh, God, this is over and I'm out of here, and I really don't want to leave."So I said, "Can I ask you a question?" He said, "Sure." "What movie do you think you've seen more than any other movie?" And he said, "Wow, let me think about that. I guess probably The Searchers." And I said, "Well, oddly, that's the movie I've seen more than any other movie." And I wasn't just BS-ing. It's true. It's my favorite movie.
I have thought about Happy Days made into a movie. As far as the original cast not being a part of it, wow, I don't know who could be who!I just don't see it going in that direction. I can see the original cast doing the movie very easily though.
I have thought about Happy Days made into a movie. As far as the original cast not being a part of it, wow, I don't know who could be who! I just don't see it going in that direction. I can see the original cast doing the movie very easily though.
I read the script [ of 'Steve Jobs' movie ], and it was very, very good. I wasn't sure they would want me to be in the movie, but I auditioned for it. Which I hadn't done in a few years. But I had auditioned in the previous few years for another movie that I did not get the part. And so my track record wasn't good. But I really wanted to audition because I was worried that I was going to blow it, and I wanted it to be on them for choosing me.
A good movie is a movie that you could see over and over again, not a movie that wins a Oscar, or a movie that makes a lot of money. It's a movie that you personally can watch over and over again. That, to me, is a measure of a good movie.
I think it took me seven years before I got the script for 'Frozen River.' That's the movie I had been looking for my whole career. When I read that, I knew I had to shoot that movie - that it'd be a game-changer. It was one of those scripts where I read it, and I was like, 'This movie could get into Sundance.'
A lot of people started asking me about this woman director thing, which I never thought about before. And I'd never really thought about how there aren't really many female directors. I knew it, but I'd never really sat down and thought about the implications of that, and what it meant for a woman to make a movie, and how it's viewed differently when a woman makes a movie about women.
I'm not particularly interested in working with movie stars. It depends on where you come from, I suppose. Why are you making films? The reason I want make films is because they convey ideas. I think some directors make films because they want to hang out with movie stars and be part of Hollywood. They want to be a star themselves.
I am so delighted when I get to see a really good movie. In that experience the artifice of movie making, the photography or the cutting style, falls away because you are inside the movie.
Hollywood parties not only confuse me, but they often disillusion me. The disillusion comes when I meet a movie star I’ve been admiring since childhood. I always thought that movie stars were exciting and talented people full of special personality. Meeting one of them at a party I discover usually that he (or she) is colorless and even frightened. I’ve often stood silent at a party for hours listening to my movie idols turn into dull and little people.
An eight-hour movie is definitely not a two-hour movie. An eight-hour movie is really like five independent films, if you think about it, because each is usually an hour and a half. In some ways, it is like making a movie. It's just a lot more information.
All my cuts are always about three hours, at the start, mainly because any scene in the movie that's 90 seconds, I probably shot a five-minute version of. If you just extrapolate that through the whole movie, I have a very long version of every scene, usually because, if there's one funny joke, I'll shoot five because I don't know if the one I like is going to work. I'll get back-ups because my biggest fear is to be in previews, testing the movie, and a joke doesn't work, but I have no way to fix it because I have no other line.
What 'Shaun of the Dead' and 'Hot Fuzz' and 'World's End' do is smuggle a different movie under the guise of a zombie movie or a cop or alien invasion movie. Even though they all have action and carnage, they are really films about growing up and taking responsibility.
I watched Someone to Watch Over Me the other night. I thought it was a really good movie. It's a great movie.
To be in a movie directed by Wolfgang Petersen, and a movie that had a large budget... I got a taste of what really good filmmaking could be.
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