Top 108 Kubrick Quotes & Sayings - Page 2

I like filmmakers where, if their film comes on and you step in halfway through it, you can recognize that, hey, this is a Coen Brothers film. Or, hey, this is a Stanley Kubrick movie. You can recognize some filmmakers. Like, if you put on a Sam Raimi movie, you can tell that it's a Sam Raimi movie pretty quickly. I like a signature style that people can recognize and relate to, and connect with. I think that is part of why we seek out certain directors. We want to see how they view the world.

We thought it was only in science fiction that things created by humans could actually take over what is inherently our human heritage. But Thom Hartmann shows how we've already let that happen on a frightening scale - not in Frankenstein's monsters or Kubrick's creeping computer Hal - but in the corporations that present their friendly 'faces' to us as if we have nothing to fear from this ultimate usurpation of our rights as real humans.

It is amazing that 2001: A Space Odyssey has not aged at all, except for a few minor technical gadgets. The main reason is, of course, the philosophical or spiritual element in this story. We know as little today about the secrets of Creation and evolution as we knew before, and it is not likely that we'll ever know much more. We'll have to be satisfied, as Kubrick was, respectfully admiring the potential for evolution within the mystery of the universe's creation.

It's so hard to do anything that doesn't owe some kind of debt to what Stanley Kubrick did with music in movies. Inevitably, you're going to end up doing something that he's probably already done before. It always seem like we're falling behind whatever he came up with. "Singin' in the Rain" (1952) in "A Clockwork Orange" (1971) - that was the first time I became so aware of music in movies. So no matter how hard you try to do something new, you're always following behind.

I have always been a huge fan of Ridley Scott and certainly when I was a kid. 'Alien,' 'Blade Runner' just blew me away because they created these extraordinary worlds that were just completely immersive. I was also an enormous Stanley Kubrick fan for similar reasons.

When I was a kid and I was being introduced to science fiction by watching movies with my Dad, Kubrick is one of those guys that we used to watch, you know, I watched Clockwork Orange at an age that was incredibly inappropriate, but he sat there with me and he explained what was going on and you know, I came to appreciate it even if I was terrified at the time.

Really, what I'm doing is an attempt to continue the best work of the people I adore: Francis Coppola and Scorsese and Robert Altman and Stanley Kubrick and those amazing directors whose work I grew up with and loved.

I think it's better to be too early and disturb a few people - but have other people say it was necessary - than to do it way after the fact. We shouldn't forget that Charlie Chaplin did a movie about Hitler while Hitler was alive, and Peter Sellers in Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece Dr. Strangelove was during the McCarthy time, where everybody was a communist and McCarthy was flipping completely out. I think it's important to have a movie like Postal now, where we are on the peak of the Iraq War, on the peak of terrorist attacks, where everything is actually happening.

There's no point in making films unless you intend to show us something special, otherwise just go out and watch a play. Kubrick showed us something special. Every film was a challenge, and a direct assault on cinema's conventions.

I like collaboration, I like to incorporate other people's ideas [and] that's what happens when you do a big movie. Unless you're called Stanley Kubrick and you do an independent movie for like $200 million.

Most books about Stanley Kubrick were written by people who never met him and gathered information from articles written by others who didn't know him either.

There were IBM logos designed for the film, and there were IBM design consultants working with Kubrick on the layout of the controls and computer screens.

In the whole history of movies, there has been nothing like Kubrick's vision. It was a vision of hope and wonder, of grace and of mystery, of humour and contradictions. It was a gift to us, and now it's a legacy.

For me the most moving moment came when I first started working on 2001. I was already in awe of him, and he had very much already become Stanley Kubrick by the time the film started.

[Kubrick] was unique in the sense that with each new film he redefined the medium and its possibilities. But he was more than just a technical innovator. Like all visionaries, he spoke the truth. And no matter how comfortable we think we are with the truth, it always comes as a profound shock when we're forced to meet it face-to-face.

I watch 2001: A Space Odyssey every time it’s on. I made the kids watch it every time, too, and now they just love watching it. Stanley Kubrick’s great. And Blade Runner is one of my top three science fiction films. A lot of it has come true.

[Stanley] Kubrick was a great artist and a perfectionist. He always wanted the exact right thing. He did a million takes. Everything had to be perfect. I'm an imperfectionist. I don't really care that much about the work. I write quickly. I'm careless. I shoot carelessly.

I think one of the thing that makes a Kubrick film a great experience is the fact that he bends reality to his will and is so confident that he ends up creating something that is the island in the stream of pop culture and he takes a stand that's so firm and so confident and unyielding that it can't be ignored and I appreciate that.

Stanley Kubrick's '2001' was the door that opened up the possibility of science fiction for me. Everything else up to then was fine, but didn't quite work for me.

I worked with Stanley Kubrick for almost a year back in 1990, trying to develop the screen story for his project 'Artificial Intelligence,' which is about a robot boy who wishes to become a real boy, a future scientific fairy tale inspired in the myth of Pinocchio.

Directors who have inspired me include Billy Wilder, Federico Fellini, lngmar Bergman, John Ford, Orson Welles, Werner Herzog, Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock, Francis Ford Coppola and Ernst Lubitsch. In art school, I studied painters like Edward Hopper, who used urban motifs, Franz Kafka is my favorite novelist. My approach to film stems from my art background, as I go beyond the story to the sub-conscious mood created by sound and images.

We knew from the beginning the level of commitment needed. We felt honored to work with Stanley Kubrick. We were going to do what it took to do this picture, whatever time, because I felt - and Nic [Nicole Kidman] did, too - that this was going to be a really special time for us. We knew it would be difficult. But I would have absolutely kicked myself if I hadn`t done this.

It's often the case with directors that they don't like to share credit, which is the case of Stanley. He would prefer just A Film By Stanley Kubrick including music and everything.

The genius is not in how much Stanley Kubrick does in “2001: A Space Odyssey,'' but in how little. This is the work of an artist so sublimely confident that he doesn't include a single shot simply to keep our attention. He reduces each scene to its essence, and leaves it on screen long enough for us to contemplate it, to inhabit it in our imaginations. Alone among science-fiction movies, “2001'' is not concerned with thrilling us, but with inspiring our awe.

I've always tried to create music the way Kubrick makes film, just kind of mimicking consciousness. He has a way of mimicking this greater power.

I wanted to be Steven Spielberg, Tim Burton, Stanley Kubrick, David Cronenberg, Ridley Scott, James Cameron, and Hitchcock. I'd wanted to be a director since 13, and horror and the suspense thriller were the most powerful genres to me.

I've been given that gift of working with Jack Nicholson and James Coburn and certain people who just out of nowhere break into stories - talking about working with Alfred Hitchcock or Kubrick. That's my real reward of my career.

It's almost inherent, but I'm a massive Stanley Kubrick fan. I'm a big admirer of what guys like Christopher Nolan have been able to do. For me, to be able to try to make big films that reach a lot of people, and that hopefully have something to say, is a lofty goal, but that's my goal.

Stanley Kubrick was very selective when he went into a close-up. Every director has his taste in a performance, but Stanley would explore a scene to find what was most interesting for him.

The whole idea of god is absurd. If anything, '2001' shows that what some people call 'god' is simply an acceptable term for their ignorance. What they don't understand, they call 'god' -Stanley Kubrick, interview, 1963

I'm a big believer in volume. If I made three times as many movies as Stanley Kubrick, that must mean I'm three times as good.

I was going to school thinking I was going to do something entirely different, thought acting was just a hobby at that point, met Stanley Kubrick and was like, 'Whoa, this can be an art form, and you can really move people the way you do simply by acting.'

The only outlet in mainstream culture for classical and more experimental music to be heard is through movie soundtracks, and they're such a wonderful display of emotion. I think the guy that did that best is Stanley Kubrick, working with Wendy Carlos who is an electronic composer.

Stanley Kubrick, I had been told, hates interviews. It's hard to know what to expect of the man if you've only seen his films. One senses in those films painstaking craftsmanship, a furious intellect at work, a single-minded devotion.

I have always been a huge fan of Ridley Scott and certainly when I was a kid. 'Alien', 'Blade Runner' just blew me away because they created these extraordinary worlds that were just completely immersive. I was also an enormous Stanley Kubrick fan for similar reasons.

It's hard to see a film one time and really "get it," and write fully and intelligently about it. That's a review. That's not film criticism. And there's so many expectations involved, too. You're going in to see the latest Martin Scorsese or Stanley Kubrick film, you really have high hopes, and you can't help but find that it's not exactly what you had in your head going in. Until you can watch it again, you can't accept the work for what it intends to be. It takes at least a second viewing.

Young people today are flooded with disconnected images but lack a sympathetic instrument to analyze them as well as a historical frame of reference in which to situate them. I am reminded of an unnerving scene in Stanley Kubrick's epic film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, where an astronaut, his air hose cut by the master computer gone amok, spins helplessly off into space.

I've been around long enough now and have learned to be flexible enough to know that every movie isn't going to be 'Apocalypse Now,' and every director doesn't have to be Stanley Kubrick.

I try to make everything creative because it's stimulating. There is this great Stanley Kubrick quote somewhere about how life is sort of bad and how creating is important because it lets a little light in.

If Kubrick made me love forever the film language, Scorsese made me love actors. And 'Raging Bull' is my favorite male performance ever.

[Stanley] Kubrick was a fascinating, larger than life guy who had been a friend for many years prior to our working together on that film. I found the best part of working with him to be the long conversations we had between set-ups.

Yeah, Kubrick's a big influence. In something like 'A Clockwork Orange,' he is trying to use the practical light - I mean, at least he says that in his interviews, like they're not using traditionally Hollywood lights. In 'Elephant' we basically used no lights; we never really adjusted.

As filmmakers, we want the audience to have the most complete experience they can. For example, I interviewed Stanley Kubrick years ago around the time of '2001: A Space Odyssey.' I was going to see the film that night in London, and he insisted I sit in one of four seats in the theater for the best view or not watch the film.

Does anyone remember who shot Kubrick's movies? Do you remember who shot David Lean's movies? No one remembers who shot 'Dr. Strangelove' or 'Barry Lyndon.'

Kubrick was one of those directors who actually did practically everything in his movies. He actually directed, photographed, wrote, lit, edited - everything. A few people can be like that.

When Kubrick called me about 'The Shining,' it was very strange. He first asked me to write music for his film, but I instead gave him suggestions about some of my pieces. I told him about 'The Awakening of Jacob,' which he did use in 'The Shining.'

Some of the greatest directors never got an Oscar, like Kubrick, or Hitchcock. For me, personally, I think the body of work is more important than winning an Oscar.

I generally like very visually striking films. I love a lot of Stanley Kubrick's films. I would have to say 'Dr. Strangelove', which of course has got resonance in 'Watchmen'. It's a favorite movie of mine.