Peter Mullan Quotes
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I'm not a huge kind of visual director. For me, it's all about the acting. There's no greater buzz than working with actors and seeing what they can do and how much they can improve on what you'd written. That will always be on the top of my list. It's a real privilege to see it live before anyone else sees it.
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Sometimes you have to confront your demons and sometimes even let them loose to genuinely find a place where you can gain some understanding.
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I don't like the way some actors, when playing a nasty character, will try to grab hold of something good about them.
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A lot of actors aren't particularly good directors. And they're not particularly good with other actors. That's kind of a fallacy.
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There's no such thing as an actor giving positive criticism to a director. The minute you say 'Don't you think it would look nicer...', that director's going to hate your guts. Particularly if it's a good idea.
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In Scotland, we're a colony in more ways than one. So when directors come up to work, there's a very particular way they want Scotland to look like and to behave like.
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I guess I'm part of the art house, but we really have to shake up our ideas, because we're kind of self-parodying ourselves. We go places commercial cinema doesn't go, but sometimes it's to our own detriment.
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I love acting. It's the one job I know of where you can go in, go through complete catharsis - emotionally, physically sometimes and mentally - and at the end of the day say, 'See you in the pub, guys.'
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If you go into a bank or a shop and you want them to believe that you're going to shoot them, that's an acting exercise. If you want to turn to someone else who's as tooled up as you are and persuade them to put their knife down because you'll use your knife, that's an acting exercise. Nine out of 10 delinquents are frustrated actors.
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What point is there to all the wealth and power that America may have if they can't look after its own?
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A script is utterly useless in and of itself; it's only of any worth the minute your actors, your designers, your directors come into being.
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In terms of popular cinema, 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' is as near perfection as I can think of.
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There's a part of bohemia I love. The lack of prejudice, the lack of aggression, I love the lack, for the most part, of competitiveness. It's more peaceful.
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I was on the set of 'Braveheart' and my mate says to me, 'Do you think this film will be any good?' And I really meant this, too, I told him 'Let me put it this way - It won't win any awards.' Cut to: five Oscars.
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In bringing the subject of religious oppression to a wider audience, I didn't just want to kick the Catholic Church but to poke a finger in the throat of theocracy and to let it be known that people shouldn't tolerate this anymore.
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When things are really painful, I turn it into comedy.
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No hard guy's not scared when another hard guy's knife is coming at you. You're scared, obviously, but you've to act less scared than he is. It's who is going to act less scared.
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Every film I've ever worked on, and that includes 'Braveheart' and 'Trainspotting,' I've always witnessed a director having a breakdown. Every director will have a day, without exception, where they just can't do it anymore, they don't know what to say to their cameraman, their cast. It's the sign of real, physical exhaustion.
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Life is much weirder than fiction; nothing's more absurd.