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When you're making a film, you don't really have time to consider what the whole of your film is. And then, when you're releasing your film and promoting your film, you're looking at it in a different way. Then, as you move away from it, you start to look at it objectively and think, 'What could I have done better?'
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I've rewritten other films and watched my writing be mutilated, but luckily, it's been mutilated anonymously.
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Knowledge is death in my experience. The more I know about film, the harder it is to create freely.
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The challenge in most car chases is you're trying to hide the fact that it's not the actor driving.
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Action to me is something very fun to shoot.
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I'm saying, let's learn to reacquire a respect for the power of guns. This culture is so indifferent and disrespectful of guns that we should be terrified.
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My films do very well on home video.
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With 'Rubicon,' Mark Long and Dan Capel have created the perfect environment for an intense action franchise.
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Success is never bad in Hollywood. It is what you do with success that will dog you.
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Oh my God, you look at all the uniforms in Star Wars, and it's all Nazi iconography.
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Ideally, I'd like to have a movie that people like and makes money.
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To me, the ultimate crime in an adaptation is the crime of reverence. A novel is one form of media, a screenplay is another, and a movie is yet another. There's even reverence to a screenplay.
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I am not interested in telling you what to think. My job is to show you what I think. Period.
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Scripts don't get movies made.
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Directing has completely changed the way I write and watch films.
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The way I like to describe Hollywood today is this: everyone wants to make 'Deliverance,' but no one wants to be Ned Beatty.
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What makes a movie now is a package, a brand, a remake or some preexisting material.
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Look: the day I've made a movie that I think is really good, I hope I say it out loud so somebody can say, 'Then you probably made the worst movie of your entire career.'
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The truth of the matter is movies are a reflection of life and violence is a real part of life. I don't think you could make movies exclusively where there was no violence.
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History tends to take the simplest possible view. As soon as you start to scratch the surface of any historical event, it starts to become more and more complicated, which is not the stuff of Hollywood films. Complications tend to break down the budget.
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I'm a big fan of the movies of the '60s, more than a fan of the movies of the '70s.
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While I was a voracious movie-goer as a boy, I never put writing and films together in my mind.
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The one thing that frustrates me more than anything else is that no studio has ever told me to tone down violence. They only ask you to make it more presentable.
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There is no 'Top Gun 2' in which Maverick is not the starring role.