Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" Deep down, all directors feel like frauds - because it's built into the nature of the job. You're the jack of all trades and the master of none. The cameraman knows the camera, the sound man knows the sound equipment - and you? You can't do anything: You can't do the acting, you can't dress the set, you don't record the sound or shoot the images. "

Paul Greengrass

Camera

Nature

" Very few people do bad things because they're bad. They generally do bad things because they think they're the right thing to do, but they're misplaced. "

" I'd always suspected my face wouldn't fit in drama departments. And it never did! "

" Tom Hanks has built his career playing ordinary men. "

" Studio people are bright. Empowering. They don't want to have to interfere creatively. That's their horror story, too. "

" I'll always see myself as a British filmmaker, powerfully so. "

" This new global economy, it's all based on the sea routes. "

" Making a film, every film, is a big gamble, large or small. The more that you do it, the more you're aware of that. "

Paul Greengrass

Gamble

Small

" I don't storyboard like some. I mean, all directors are different. I plan meticulously - really meticulously. "

" I'm British; I live here, and I've always made my films here. And we're on a journey in British filmmaking right now. We're attracting big films again. 'Star Wars' filming here will employ thousands of people. We're world-class in so many of the craft elements, and the vibrancy of our filmmaking is strong. "

" Action is only really compelling when it reveals character - character revealed through action, and not action for its own sake. "

" Remembering is painful, it's difficult, but it can be inspiring and it can give wisdom. "

" The people who went on that airplane were unexceptional. "

" The most important thing as a filmmaker, the hardest journey you'll have, is to find your point of view. "

" When you think of the Cold War, there are various places where you imagine espionage. Espionage crossroads of the Cold War bring you to the backstreets of Berlin, or Vienna. "

" It's funny: when you make a film, you always look back, and there are always crucial decisions that get made. You look back, and at the time they don't seem like it, but you look back, and you see they were absolutely fundamental. "

" Some filmmakers are more eclectic than others. I'm not one of those! I'm interested in what I'm interested in, which is films about the world, about what's going on. I started in TV documentaries with 'World in Action,' and those interests feed into the films I make now. "

Paul Greengrass

Going

Action

" I prize something that feels authentic. It's an undefinable thing, but I know it when I see it, and I think audiences do, too. One of the reasons why 'Bloody Sunday' and 'United 93' work is because they felt real, felt truthful. "

" I am interested in seeing if you can create on film pieces that feel contemporary and urgent. "

" I think there's something about a character facing the huge problems and challenges of the contemporary world and meeting them with - head on with courage, allowing for darkness and mistake, but ultimately always moral. That's incredibly, incredibly inspiring, and that's honestly what I think. "

" Whatever your style or subject matter, in the end, film-making is about searching for authenticity - that is what the audience will divine. "

" I don't want to feel what I'm creating on film has an outcome that is preordained. I don't think of the world as a place with a divinity that shapes our end. What you try to do with film is create, as far as you possibly can, an unfolding present - a theatre in which an outcome happens and is tested. "

" My films express me, my sense of rhythm, my sense of impact, my sense of kinetic energy. I like films to move, but I like also clear storytelling and characters, and most of all, I like authentic emotion. "

" Ultimately, if you look at all my films from 'Bloody Sunday' on, they're steeped in a post-9/11 atmosphere. 'United 93' is directly about 9/11, of course, but every one of the movies deals with paranoia, mistrust, and fear. "

" I spent my 20s making film after film, often in very adverse conditions. You'd fly back from somewhere - Beirut, the Falklands, South Africa - on Saturday, and you'd have 24 hours to cut your film, and it would go out on Monday night. "

" Acting is many things. Acting is playing lines, of course, but it's much more profound than that. Acting is truth-telling and trying to find the truth in a human situation, which will be sketched out by a screenwriter with all the skill that a screenwriter can do; but in the end, that's just the map of the journey. "

" I always tell young film-makers, 'Find the song that only you can sing.' It doesn't just come to you. It's trial and error and disappointment before you find, slowly but surely, the confidence to express your film-making identity. "

" The one mistake you must never make is to agree to make a film or sign on to film that you don't believe in. Most importantly because it's unfair on that. It's not about you; it's just not fair on that project because you're doing it a profound disservice because you're not serving it - you're uncommitted, ultimately. "

" Why are people saying it's too soon? Like the people on that flight, we need to agree about what to do about terrorism. And I think we need to have that conversation now. "

" It's no good in a scene to have one actor lie down because the scene says it's the other actor's moment. Each actor has to believe that with extra will, the outcome of a scene can be different. An actor can win the scene if he exerts the most powerful will in that moment. "