William Friedkin Quotes
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Sure, you could go out and make Jaws today. But all of the sequels to Jaws weren't good. They are all worthless. The Godfather II is the only sequel that I have ever seen that is as good as or better than the original.
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When you make a Blu-ray, its not the same as the print process was. You have little or no control over any print that was ever made. You are a victim of the 35mm printing process.
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I have seen lampoons of my work. And I have really enjoyed them. But I would never do another version of The Exorcist.
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You don't need great actors to do a 3D picture. All of this condescending stuff that they put out? "Oh, we will always need actors." Bullshit! They are able to take anybody and put some markers on them, and have them walk through an empty room. Then they paint in the background.
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I'm not a fan of 3D. But I am a huge fan of digital imagery. Because it allows a filmmaker much more latitude to appreciate their own visions and dreams.
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I believe today that there is no film and no shot in a film that is worth a squirrel getting a sprained ankle.
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There is a thin line between the policeman and the criminal. The best cops are always crossed. The best cops are the ones who are able to think like criminals. But for a quirk of fate, they might have been criminals.
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I believe it's true that there's good and evil in everyone and it's a constant struggle to have your better angels prevail.
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The art of movies is to allow the audience to suspend their disbelief. They need to use their imaginations.
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I tend to be attracted to characters who are up against a wall with very few alternatives. And the film then becomes an examination of how they cope with very few options. And that's, I guess, what interests me in terms of human behavior.
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You are always cheating for the audience.
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I don't believe that Citizen Kane or Gone With the Wind, or any damn picture that you can name, would be better off in 3D. I think it's a gimmick. I find 3D distracting.
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But the audience is right. They're always, always right. You hear directors complain that the advertising was lousy, the distribution is no good, the date was wrong to open the film. I don't believe that. The audience is never wrong. Never.
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Star Wars is one of a handful of films that changed the zeitgeist forever.
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The informing idea of what you want to say and do, that's what will take you from film school to professional - the idea. That's what is original to you.
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The studios are making fewer films. They are making more expensive films. Profits are tougher to come by. Not only because of the expense of production. But also because of the expense of promotion and hype. To boil that all down, it's more about hype than it is about filmmaking.
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If you call yourself a non-believer, you're referring to disbelief in something, and you're acknowledging that there is something to believe in or not.
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You don't leave the film alone. You have a new audience, and you have a new medium. Why would you leave it alone? Film is not an antique. It's not a relic. It's not a Leonardo da Vinci. I don't want someone painting over a da Vinci or Rembrandt. But these movies aren't that.
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The Blu-ray is the real cinematech of world cinema. That's how it's being preserved. All of these guys that are trying to preserve 35mm negatives? They are wasting their time. There are better ways to see and project this stuff. It's called digital.
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We were just trying to make the films that we could get made, and to push the envelope. We didn't realize how far we had pushed the envelope. That all came later. That all came from books and articles about the golden age of the '70s. Believe me, to a lot of us, it was no golden age. The studio heads were very powerful then. They would fire guys right and left. They would look at your dailies and tell you what was wrong with them... a lot of stuff that doesn't go on today. Young filmmakers who are successful today, they don't often have that to put up with.
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And it was only a week later that I realized a close up of Steve McQueen was worth the greatest landscape you could find.
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In the case of a film like The Exorcist or To Live and Die in L.A., I saw the whole movie in my head before I went to shoot it. I never did storyboards, or anything like that. I had the film in my head.
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If Star Wars had failed, you wouldn't have 90 percent of what's out there today.
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I've seen my own films close to a thousand times in one form or another. When you edit them. When you shoot them. Then you run them over and over again for sound and music. Then you'd go to premiere screenings, and have to do promotional screenings in other cities. I can't watch any of my old films.