Sam Mendes Quotes

You just never know when movies are going to take off or not. The lucky thing about this was that it didn't cost a lot of money, and therefore there wasn't loads of pressure on me. You've got to work. You've got to want an audience to sit forward in their chairs sometimes, rather than sit back and be bombarded with images. You've got to believe as a filmmaker that if a movie's good enough, it's going to survive; and if it's not, well, it won't. When I drive through a field, I want to see green grass sometimes, and I don't want to see black and white. Listen, you make a big movie, you're going into the Coliseum, and people are going to give you the thumbs up or the thumbs down. And that's part of the game. It's part of the fun as well. If you lived through the shooting of Jaws, you can live through anything. I wanted to keep exploring... I'm not about to choose a series of movies in which I can use the same bag of tricks and style that I used in the first film. I like throwing snowballs at small children. The movies that influenced me were movies that told their stories through pictures more than words. Confidence is essential, but ego is not. Directing Skyfall was one of the best experiences of my professional life, but I have theatre and other commitments, including productions of Charlie And The Chocolate Factory and King Lear, that need my complete focus over the next year and beyond. I've made movies that cost less than one car chase. Shooting action is very, very meticulous, it's increments, tiny little pieces. One movie is only one movie. I want to have a lifetime of making films. I don't think good and evil are polarized. I feel like the American years were my apprenticeship for doing a Bond movie. You freeze with the number of opportunities given to you and just decide to do nothing at all. I want to inspire, and be inspired. I think movies are a director's medium in the end. Theater is the actor's medium. Theater is fast, and enjoyable, and truly rewarding. I believe in great live performance. I want to try and work in different genres with different types of actors, on small movies and big movies. For me, certain shots or scenes are keys in the movie. As a first-time director in America, I feel I've been very fortunate. The characters are trapped within the lifestyle. It's about what goes on before the movie starts. Truly great actors carry their characters in silence with them. They communicate without words the relationships that predate the movie. Learn to say, 'I don't know the answer.�� It could be the beginning of a very good day's rehearsal. This is the first time in 10 years I don't know what I'm doing next, and I'm rather enjoying it. Soon I'll be climbing the walls no doubt, but right now, it's not clear, I'm just enjoying the freedom. Children make you confront your own childhood. Which I think is common. Suddenly you're remembering your own parents as parents, not to mention the fact that you're confronted by them as grandparents. So you also have that terrible shock, a mirror image of your own. You suddenly seem to be so helpless in the face of young children. And you think, 'How did you ever bring up me?' The moment you have kids, you are prey to judgment, but you also become a judge. You find yourself going, 'Can you believe what she did with such-and-such?' at school. Politicizing of kids starts with pregnancy, of course. You shouldn't be drinking wine. You can't be smoking, either. The poor woman is poked and prodded and touched and obsessed over. The importance of rehearsal is maybe you want to talk about how the scene's going to be designed, how it's going to be staged, all of those things. It's all about preparation, and deciding what mutually you don't want to do, rather than necessarily what you do.