Top 604 Woody Allen Quotes & Sayings - Page 3

I think Woody Allen calls it 'anxiety of influence.' When you're in your formative years and you watch a movie that makes you want to make movies... For Wes Anderson, it's Truffaut. I'm sure for P.T. Anderson it was Scorsese and Jonathan Demme.

Woody [Allen] is a fascinating character to be around. You don't really know what he's going to want. You're on your toes, but you're on your heels too, if you know what I mean.

Sometimes, when things go well on a set, or when you are working with somebody like Pedro Almodovar, Woody Allen, Rob Marshall or somebody so talented and so inspiring, it's really beautiful, what happens there.

I was immediately into all the great movie comedians - Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Richard Pryor, Gene Wilder. Everything those guys had anything to do with, from I don't know how young. Super young.

Woody Allen is a genius. His films are wonderful. He's poetic, but he's also a critic. He artfully steps back from a social setting and criticizes it without - I suspect - without letting himself be vulnerable to it.

I absorbed the vinyl of Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Jack Elliott, to Michael McClure and then into the Beat poets, Allen Ginsberg. At campus, we were absorbing that stuff. We looked to America.

For a long time now, movie characters have generally been articulate, even chatty. Call it the influence of Woody Allen, but we have become used to characters who are well able to explain themselves to others.

People who I've worked with are always like, 'Why aren't you doing comedy? You're funny!' because they've only seen the one side. I did do the comedy 'Whatever Works,' with Woody Allen and Larry David.

I would love to work with Dustin Hoffman, John Malkovich, Omar Epps, Martin Scorsese, Josh Mond, Woody Allen, Paul Thomas Anderson, and David O. Russell, just to name a few. Those guys are absolutely brilliant at what they do.

I may look like an American WASPy doctor or lawyer, but I feel just like Woody Allen. Don't cast me for my looks - I have a very ironic, existential, crazy Jew in me.

I grew up with Woody Allen and early Spike Lee movies in which New York was such a specific character. The city has a certain vibe and beat which really informs your entire existence.

I think I'll be Scottish in every movie I write. They always try to talk me out of it, but Woody Allen is always a nebbish New Yorker. Why shouldn't I be a goofy Glaswegian?

Woody Allen, when we did Vicky Cristina Barcelona, said to Rebecca Hall, "Do it one time happy, one time sad, and one time indifferent, as I won't know where you should be until I'm editing this, in terms of your emotions."

I know that this sounds grand, but I don't try to compete with other people. I like to think there's enough pie for everyone. The kind of people I'm competing with are my heroes - Woody Allen, Billy Wilder - who I know I'm going to fall short of.

It'd be great to do some other TV. 'Breaking Bad' is definitely my home, but I'd love to have a nice hiatus gig, like a recurring role. Or to do a good film. I'd like to do a Woody Allen movie. I really didn't have a plan, and that's okay with me.

I'm a big fan of 'Woody Allen' movies, so I like all the actresses in his movies like 'Diane Keaton' and Mia Farrow.

Life is never all one thing. It bounces around. Certainly, my own life has. Look at Woody Allen's funny movies - all the humor comes out of sad stuff. Sometimes you have to laugh, no matter what life deals you.

I'm a fan of Louis C.K., I'm a fan of Lena Dunham. I love shows about people that other people would consider unlikable, or, like, the work of Woody Allen and Albert Brooks.

Woody Allen is really the ultimate. I love that he believed in himself enough to do what he did. And I have that same feeling - that there's nobody that looks like me in movies, nobody would cast me as a romantic lead, but I want to do it and I feel confident that I can.

In politics, the definition of a real man is different from, I would say, outside Washington or outside the establishment. I don't think that's even arguable. But human nature is what it is, and men (straight men) want women. And it's always a challenge. It's never a piece of cake. You're rejected. You know Woody Allen? One funny thing he really said. Somebody said, "Woody, what has success meant?" He said, "It means being rejected by a higher class of woman." Life is filled with rejection. Men - nobody - women, they don't like rejection.

I've always wanted to make people laugh. It's been my only ambition, ever since my dad introduced me to the genius of the great comedians: Tony Hancock, Woody Allen, people like that.

I wanted to work with Mike Leigh. I had my list of British people I wanted to work with, and I wanted to work with David Lynch and Woody Allen.

I was voted best-looking kid in high school but, as you can see, things changed. I used to say I was a 260 pound Woody Allen. You can make that 295 pound now.

I love Woody Allen. He's very clever, always thinking, and he's great with actors. He lets actors do what they want to do and occasionally he'll give them a specific kind of direction.

I was voted best-looking kid in high school but, as you can see, things changed. I used to say I was a 260-pound Woody Allen. You can make that 295-pound now.

I felt very fulfilled after doing 'Vicky Cristina Barcelona' because I'd always wanted to work with Woody Allen. That was like a lifelong dream, and that was thrilling for me, to enter that world.

I don't know if it's really important, or intelligent even, when people say to me I'm a white Spike Lee, because they said to Spike Lee you're a black Woody Allen.

[Woody Allen] does very few takes, and he doesn't give a whole ton of directions, although he does give direction.

I think Woody Allen is pretty much of a genius. I'm thinking of filmmakers every century or two, but I've never had the luck to meet them. People who create their absolutely own world and are totally inimitable.

I like so many different directors: Scorsese, Coppola, Cassavetes, Jarmusch, Gus van Sant, Woody Allen and the greats like Fellini, Bergman, Tarkovsky and among current filmmakers von Trier, Ang Lee, Wong Kar-wai.

I discovered ... that a novel has nothing to do with words in the first instance. Writing a novel is a cosmological matter, like the story told by Genesis (we all have to choose our role models, as Woody Allen puts it).

Yes, Im a New Yorker, born and bred. While Im not quite the L.A. snob that Woody Allen is, I do find myself happier in New York.

People sometimes forget all the films that we've done. They remember the likes of 'Malcolm X' and 'Do the Right Thing.' But I've been working since 1986. From the beginning, I was determined to not just be a flash in the pan. I've got to keep up with Woody Allen. He's lapping me.

We don't need another Woody. Even Bob Dylan knew he couldn't be Woody Guthrie... I like Woody Guthrie fine, but I don't need the 50th generation version of it.

I'm not like Woody Allen like, "Oh my god what's going to happen? Ooh Ooh Oohhh." I'm just high-strung. So I do need to do a lot of stuff.

I did a movie with Woody Allen [“Hollywood Ending” in 2002]. I only had a few days with Treat on that film. I immediately liked Treat. Treat and I had a sense of humor about the whole thing.

I'm a total fangirl for Nancy Meyers. I love all her movies - 'Something's Gotta Give,' 'Father of the Bride,' 'The Parent Trap,' etc. I also love Woody Allen - 'Annie Hall' and 'Manhattan' are my favorites.

I am defined also by Woody Allen’s films and Martin Scorsese and Jim Jarmusch and Julian Schnabel or Almodóvar, or by Guillermo del Toro, Iñárritu, Cuarón. Even if we haven’t worked with them, we are all defined by their filmography.

You know, I was really privileged to meet Woody Allen, who is now a filmmaker, let's be honest. He's also an actor. And he's classic. And because I have no conception of what classic fashion is now, I respond to his slightly outdated sensibilities.

When I worked with Woody Allen, I only got the parts of the script that I was in. I was able to piece together the narrative from that, but I remember being quite excited to watch the movie - the movie that I was in but didn't know what happened in, like, 65 percent of.

We grew up watching Woody Allen and Albert Brooks movies, and we see this neurotic, annoying, unlikeable male at the center of a story, and people root for him anyway. I think that's really what we have been craving as women is the hero who doesn't look perfect and doesn't act perfectly.

Steven Spielberg, Woody Allen, you name it - I'm interested. I'm free. I'm looking for acting work. At the same time, you have to find a role you're right for, and then there's a slew of other actresses. That's why I will pursue more directing. It's like, who needs a boss? I'm right here.

I personally can watch an eight-hour documentary on Woody Allen because I'm fascinated by him. But, an audience can't really sit through more than two and a half hours on any movie. It doesn't matter if Marlon Brando came back from the dead. It's just impossible.

I'm sick of hearing, thinking and talking about Woody Allen. Nonetheless, the allegations against him continue to capture our national attention because so much of the story is strange and sordid.

The real achievement of Woody Allen was that he was making movies that felt very personal, and for a whole group of people, it spoke to them. Then he became an archetype, like Groucho Marx or Chaplin.

I talked to Woody Allen for half an hour or something. It was pretty incredible. He really went into lots of detail about the story [in Blue Jasmin] and what actually happened. Just talking to him is very surreal.

I took an acting class with Louise Lasser, Woody Allen's first wife and co-star in many movies. I've done some other indie films, if you look on the YouTube. I love acting - it's great.

'Ernest Borgnine' is sort of my version of Woody Allen's 'Purple Rose Of Cairo' in that it's about the occasional difficulty of coming to terms with the cold hard facts and the temptation to escape into another world - like movies, for example. I'm a pro at escaping.

I was raised by a dad who has a fantastic sense of humor who raised me on 'The Muppet Show,' Steve Martin movies, and Woody Allen's standup, and he really encouraged me to ham it up from an early age.

I don't really believe in trying to erase every Woody Allen movie from history. For one thing, that's kind of unfair to all the people who worked on those movies or albums or whatever it is. What did they do wrong to have their work erased from culture?

Woody Allen likes to do a lot of master shots. He likes to get the whole thing in one take, and so you could be going along doing a scene, and then the next to last line, all of a sudden, you stumble, and you have to go back to first base.

Very few people have actually read Freud, but everyone seems prepared to talk about him in that Woody Allen way. To read Freud is not as much fun.

Woody Allen has done some excellent serious movies, too, like Crimes And Misdemeanors. Very overlooked movie, I think, and really his best. And currently I like Big Fish!

The process of filmmaking is very musical, you get into the rhythm and the rhythmics of how someone is, especially with Woody Allen who is very much into body language and body movement.

Woody Allen - nobody has been a better joke teller than him - and even in his great films, it's always coming out of the character. If you don't have that, jokes are just empty and I think that people rely too much on jokes.

When I tell people I spent almost a year in Paris, I know they imagine something out of a Woody Allen movie, which it wasn't, of course. I was just working in a clothes shop, but I was aware that it was exciting.

Sigmund Freud was a half baked Viennese quack. Our literature, culture, and the films of Woody Allen would be better today if Freud had never written a word.

I had never met Woody Allen before Melinda and Melinda. My agent knew the producer of the movie and he suggested that we would work well together and then we did. We had a great time on that film.

I've worked with Woody Allen twice and he was like, "Whatever you want to change, it's up to you. If you want to change the words, make them your own."

When I went to Paris, I had a lot of ideas about it that were formed in the sort of ether that flows about if you watch too many recent Woody Allen movies or took French classes as a kid. I was certainly full of those.