A Quote by Kenji Mizoguchi

People like me and Ozu get films made by hard work, but Shimizu is a genius. — © Kenji Mizoguchi
People like me and Ozu get films made by hard work, but Shimizu is a genius.
We try to make films for people [that are] the films that we'd like to see. They're not easy to get made. They're hard to get made. You have to keep the budget low to get them made. But at the end of the day, I don't really worry about competition, because I don't really think of it that way. I don't feel like I'm in a race with anybody.
It wasn't my childhood fantasy to work with Truffaut or be in obscure films. I like Midnight Run better than I like The Bicycle Thief. It was films like Die Hard and Bladerunner that made me want to be an actor.
I have been told that... time doesn't flow in a straight line in my films. It goes round in a circle. Sometimes people comment that the films remind them of Ozu. Maybe that's right. But in Japan, nobody comments on how time passes in my films. So perhaps that is a different way of thinking.
I made films, like 'Shadow of the Vampire,' and I did not like the work I did on it and then Willem Dafoe was nominated for the Oscar. I made films like 'The Adventures of Pinocchio' with Martin Landau. I thought I would get nominated and it flopped. You never know.
Best thing that's ever happened to me. I focus so much less on me. It's made me content, it's made me happy. It's like a Christmas present every single day that I get to unwrap. It's hard work.
To be recognized for your hard work is a true honor. An Academy Award nomination is one thing that, five years later, I can't form a sentence about. It has not made me feel like I can work any less hard. It makes me feel like I have to work 100 times as hard, to even be as remotely good, to work through an experience that could take me through that again.
One of my favorite films is LATE SPRING by Yasujiro Ozu. To me, it represents film as art.
One of my favorite films is 'Late Spring' by Yasujiro Ozu. To me, it represents film as art.
It has been said that Ernest Hemingway would rewrite scenes until they pleased him, often thirty or forty times. Hemingway, critics claimed, was a genius. Was it his genius that drove him to work hard, or was it hard work that resulted in works of genius?
Every film is hard work, and a few lucky people do get Oscars for what they do, and it's recognition for all that hard work on a certain level. If you didn't do the hard work, you wouldn't be standing there. On the other hand, people do a lot of hard work and don't get Oscars, so it's a mixture of glory and injustice at the same time.
People sometimes attribute my success to my genius; all the genius I know anything about is hard work.
The vampire or the bad guy, that's what people do remember. Lars von Trier, like Guy Maddin, their films are made for a group of exclusive people who like special films. And they are special films, they are art films. And I started with commercial films at the beginning, and later on, because you know, when you are an actor, you have the same cliché like everybody else, you want to be in big films, you want to be known and all that.
Independent films are very hard to get made, but I'm lucky enough to get them made, so I'm going to keep doing it. I like my independence. I like being able to tell a story the way I want to tell a story. I don't like developing it with a team. I like coming to a story and deciding whether I want to do it or not.
My dad, he worked rebar, an ironworker. Watching my pops get up every single morning, going into work, working hard - I think that really made me want to work that hard, wanted to make me get up early and go for a run or get a lift in or get some extra hitting in and really try to better myself every day.
I have not cared for money, and I enjoy working. Money comes my way. People work hard so they get enough money. Or they work hard so they don't have to work hard later in life. But though I don't need money, I still work hard because I like what I am doing.
When I have been told that my films remind people of Ozu, I have never been too convinced.
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