American Film Quotes

Hitchcock denigrated American films, saying they were all 'pictures of people talking' - as, indeed, most of them are.

Night Watch itself is a very Russian movie. Its impossible to imagine this kind of movie somewhere else: a movie with a depressing ending, a lot of inexplicable storylines, strange characters. Its a Russian reflection of American film culture.

The future of American film lies on television.

Most young people now are very vulnerable as to what the American film aficionados are going to say. They care too much about a system that has no room for them. It's really a serious issue for me, because to me it's, how do I survive beyond a film that was disgraced or praised?

American films are the best films. This is a fact. Cinema is - along with Jazz - the great American art form. And cinema in a very real sense created the American identity that has been exported around the world.

The dean of the American Film Institute has written that I'm one of the very few auteurs in America. I've had freedom for 40 years to create art that is totally personal and is what I believe in.

I'm not usually attracted to big-budget American films.

The fact is that you could not be, and still cannot be, a 25-year-old homosexual trying to make it in the British film business or the American film business or even the Italian film business. It just doesn't work and you're going to hit a brick wall at some point.

I just think Australia tends to make very good movies, so if someone hands me an Australian or an American film script I would guess the Australian film would be more intriguing.

I wouldn't make an anti-American film. I'm one of the most pro-American foreigners I know. I love America and Americans.

There is no realism in American films. No realism, but something much better, great truth.

I've done quite a few big American films.

The crime film is the most honest American film.

Yes, I was hired by Universal because they needed a comedy director. They had seen Scandal and liked it. I saw an opportunity even in those comedies to begin my project of American films.

'St. Elmo's Fire' is one of my favorite films. I like the storytelling of those teenage American films. You don't get that now. Teenage American movies are all about sick jokes, puking a lot, arse jokes.

I think one of the most important American films is "Jackie Brown", which is such a humble depiction of humble characters but so powerful. The film was pure depiction of the American poverty of the 90s.

The American films just have so much more publicity and so much more money behind them that it's so hard to compete.

I think American films right now are suffering from an excess of scale. Lots of movies we're seeing now are more akin to video games than stories about human life and relationships. Twelve- to 20-year-olds are maybe the largest economic force in the US movie business. I'm not a very nostalgic person - but I enjoy a good story.

Our film [Hide and seek ]was created as part of the Asian American Film Lab's 11th 72 Hour Film Shootout filmmaking competition, where filmmaking teams have just 72 hours to conceive, write, shoot, edit and submit a film based on a common theme. The winners were announced during the 38th Asian American International Film Festival in New York last July. The theme for 2015 was 'Two Faces' and was part of a larger more general theme of 'Beauty'.

The reason why I always wanted to make an American film was because of the Western genre. It is something that I would very much like to make in the future, because it's very uniquely American, and I can't make a Western film in Korean.

I did a couple of little Off-Broadway things, but my first Broadway show was A History Of The American Film, written by Chris Durang. Swoosie Kurtz was one of the stars. It was a wonderful show. It closed in 40 performances. I think it was kind of ahead of its time.

I saw what I could [in Mexico City], but we rarely got anything other than big, mainstream American films.

I think that in the American film industry - or even in the European cinema - movies are made not to disturb any kind of class or any kind of minority.

The greatest all-around American film actor is James Stewart.

American films, it's a money-making industry. And in France, you can find great respect for cinema as art.

Every time I make an American film I just trust the American director and American writer. Myself, I would never make this kind of film. For me, those kinds of films are ridiculous. They don't make sense.

America always seemed to me this foreign land that I imagined I could escape to if I needed to get away - and I think that came both from the fact that I was born there and from watching so many American movies when I was a kid. I was brought up on American films.

I'd rather do theater and British films than move to L.A. in hopes of getting small roles in American films.

The buried code of many American films has become: If I kill you, I have won and you have lost. The instinctive ethical code of traditional Hollywood, the code by which characters like James Stewart, John Wayne and Henry Fonda lived, has been lost.

European films were what it was about for me - the sensations I needed, the depth, the storytelling, the characters, the directors, and the freedom that you can't really find in American films

I spent a couple of years doing American films. I did a few.

That comes from most people having an American film model in their heads which is nothing but a total illusionary masturbatory massage.

I make American films for American audiences and Asian films for Asian audiences.

Every time I make American film I just trust American directors and American writers.

Well, if you're talking about the current climate, there's a lack of content in American film because I think people are deeply confused about their emotions, and they don't regret certain aspects of their own foreign policy.

When I'm making an American film, it's more safe because there are so many people on the set to watch me. Whatever I do, they say, 'What are you doing!? Tell me first!' There are so many restrictions.

Crash is hyper-articulate and often breathtakingly intelligent and always brazenly alive. I think it's easily the strongest American film since Clint Eastwood's Mystic River, though it is not for the fainthearted.

American films are less American every day, because you have to please a world audience. There's less authenticity, so it's more accessible.

When I was growing up you would see big American films that really mythologised their landscape, that really showed the vastness and the drama of their country.

I wanted to make Canadian films, and I ended up making American films.

OK, I wasn't as successful as, say, Julia Roberts, but I'd spent years in a very respectable career, some big American films but a host of other smaller, really exciting, maybe experimental films, being paid rubbish but working with fine people, that was what I thought I was known for.

I've never left my culture. I've left my country, but I've not left my culture. In the same way, you shouldn't be worried why George Lucas is going to the outer galaxy to make a movie. He's still making a film within his culture; he's making an American film. I go to Thailand or the Peruvian jungle, the Amazon, and I still make Bavarian films.

Oh, don't let's ask for the moon. We've already got the stars.

Don't let's ask for the moon.We have the stars.

Ladies and gentlemen, my mother thanks you, my father thanks you, my sister thanks you, and I thank you!

A boy's best friend is his mother.

A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti.

In the last ten years of watching films I have found that some of the foreign films I saw affected me most. One American film that stands out for me for its workmanship and artistry is 'Ratatouille.' It was an astonishing effort in filmmaking.

There's an abundance of exposure when you start working in American films. Inevitably you become a brand and that has to be controlled.

Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.