Stephen Hunter Quotes & Sayings

If you have only 95 minutes of material, make an only 95-minute movie. Amazing how often that's forgotten. — Stephen Hunter

As I said, the good die young, and the motherfuckers go on forever, pardon my French. — Stephen Hunter

The prospects for a coherent, hilarious and consistent American comedy seem to lessen every year, as the poor waterlogged, gassy corpse called 'Evan Almighty' proved when it floated ashore recently. So there's a temptation to think too highly of Robin Williams's uneven but occasionally funny 'License to Wed.' — Stephen Hunter

I'd like to do a bit of comedy. — Stephen Hunter

Your idealism will get you killed or, worse, knighted, and you'll spend the rest of your days among fools and MPs. As for me, the chance to refuse an audience with the queen would be exquisite. — Stephen Hunter

By the '50s and '60s, war movies had become big and impersonal. They almost never bothered to characterize the Japanese enemy as particularly evil; in fact, they never bothered to characterize him at all. — Stephen Hunter

For me, as an actor, just to keep acting and to keep being able to work and to do different roles and challenging roles, that's something I'd love to do. — Stephen Hunter

Even my pathological love of Japan and its beauties, glories and eccentricities is sorely tested by 'The Grudge 2,' from Takashi Shimizu, a movie so bewildering and impenetrable that I believe it siphoned off a good 40 IQ points. — Stephen Hunter

The Japanese, despite the trade deficit and their ability to build fabulous automobiles, still think that a guy in a monster suit is all that is needed for a monster movie. — Stephen Hunter

The worst moment was always taps. It didn't matter if the bugler played it well or poorly, in tune or out; there was something in the mournful ache of the music, and how it spoke of men dying before their time for something they only vaguely understood and being only vaguely appreciated by the people on whose behalf they died, that made it hurt so much. — Stephen Hunter

Three men at McAlester State Penitentiary had larger penises than Lamar Pye, but all were black and therefore, by Lamar's own figuring, hardly human at all. — Stephen Hunter

As long as 'Pearl Harbor' stays in the past, it's perfect; when it wretchedly changes gears in the late going, it becomes the wrong kind of same old story: Hollywood stupidity and callowness, writ large across the sky. — Stephen Hunter

They were eyes made for laughter, but not raucous yuks; rather, for the laughter of wit, of erudition, of the bon mot. — Stephen Hunter

I never feel so utterly fraudulent as when I review a movie whose charms impress all in the world and I simply do not get it. The other variant is that I love something the world disdains. This has had severe career consequences: I am still famous - or notorious - in certain quarters where I am recalled as the man who liked 'Hudson Hawk.' — Stephen Hunter

That's the bravest thing, I think: not to be brave for yourself but for a buddy when it gets you nothing and costs you everything. — Stephen Hunter

You know that easy money, stupid people, and hard times have a way of creating misery. Your — Stephen Hunter

'Shall We Dance?' takes a small, exquisite Japanese movie and turns it into a big, stupid American movie. Still, it must be said that as glossy and overproduced as the thing is, it's a good big, stupid American movie. — Stephen Hunter

I'm not an expert or a trained ballistician. But it is a subject I've studied intently for 50 years, so I may know a thing or two. In my opinion, the JFK investigation was poorly handled. — Stephen Hunter

'Pearl Harbor' is definitely about December 7, 1941, but it is not of December 7, 1941. It's not even really of our age, either. It has more of the feel of a film from, roughly, mid-war. — Stephen Hunter

I was in a delirium of destruction, as if the body were an insult to the philosophy of my life, and only in destroying it could I reclaim my sanity. — Stephen Hunter

I suppose I was formed by too many movies and too much television. At some point I absorbed the dramatic formula. — Stephen Hunter

I love food. I'm a complete foodie. I love to cook. I find it very hard to say no to food. I get grumpy if I don't get food. — Stephen Hunter

The Americans, he laughed drunkenly. They build more cars than anybody in the world, and take them out and dump them in terrible traffic jams. The only thing crazier than the Americans were the Russians, who never had traffic jams because they didn't have cars. — Stephen Hunter

But you can still find good films if you read your local film critics and are willing to drive a bit. You have to be a proactive film viewer to have the most provocative cinema life. — Stephen Hunter

The horror movie will not go away. Look at the change in the Hollywood landscape as a signifier of its durability. At one point it was just one of many styles of films called 'product' that between, say, 1930 and 1970, the movie city ground out like sausages or hula hoops at a rate of four or five a week. — Stephen Hunter

You're a genius," she said. "Hardly," he said. "I just show up and pay attention. — Stephen Hunter

There is a paradox at the core of penology, and from it derives the thousand ills and afflictions of the prison system. It is that not only the worst of the young are sent to prison, but the best - that is, the proudest, the bravest, the most daring, the most enterprising and the most undefeated of the poor. There starts the horror. - Norman Mailer's introduction to In the Belly of the Beast by Jack Henry Abbott No one knows what it's like to be the bad man. — Stephen Hunter

Now, I am about to be nailed as the man who disliked 'Howl's Moving Castle.' Lord, give me strength! Also, IT, please disconnect the e-mail thing. — Stephen Hunter

Within an ensemble, like in sports, if you do your little job, it makes everybody look good. — Stephen Hunter

I've actually published two compilations, if only barely. Hire a private detective and possibly you'll be able to locate them. One was called 'Violent Screen,' and the other 'Now Playing at the Valencia.' Bantam and Simon and Schuster. — Stephen Hunter

Yeats said, 'Men of action, when they lose all belief, believe only in action. — Stephen Hunter

'Memoirs of a Geisha' is everything you'd expect it to be: beautiful, mesmerizing, tasteful, Japanese. It's just not very hot. — Stephen Hunter

knowing that he himself looked so cowboylike to these Eastern people, in his best black Tony Lamas, a nice pair of Levi's, a pointed-collar shirt with string tie and a black Stetson, all under a sheepskin coat, his best coat. — Stephen Hunter

The new book is a result of my well-documented ... absorption in Samurai movie culture. It's called 'The 47th Samurai: A Bob Lee Swagger novel,' and it takes Bob to Japan in search of the sword his father recovered on Iwo that has gone missing under extremely violent circumstances. — Stephen Hunter

In 'Beowulf,' director Robert Zemeckis uses a technique called 'motion capture' to conjure fantastical things, angles into action and sweeping vistas to stun your eyes and take your breath away. But what he hasn't mastered and what the technique can't do is this: emotion capture. — Stephen Hunter

I grew up in the suburbs among highly educated people, in a house crammed with books. It was a culture rich in ideas, stimulation, entertainment, and mental activity, all helpful to the nurture of an imaginative child who wanted from an early age to be a writer. — Stephen Hunter

Charles checked on his two snitches among the subversives. There were bascially two subversive groups in Blue Eye -Communists and Republicans, - and Charles confirmed quickly that neither had any revolutions planned — Stephen Hunter

By my count, of the more than 600 English-language World War II movies made since 1940, only four have even acknowledged the humanity of the soldiers of Nippon. There may be a few I've missed, but not many. — Stephen Hunter

What he called his own personal night was about the feeling of being nothing, of having no worth, of having spent himself in a war nobody cared about, and having given up everything that was important and good. — Stephen Hunter

No one knows what it's like to be the bad man. - Peter Townsend, "Behind Blue Eyes — Stephen Hunter

And then there are the Germans. Do you know, they form words by just sticking them together, so that their word for 'Gatling gun' literally translates into 'mechanicaldeviceshootingwithoutcockingrifle?' The words get longer still. No word is too long for a German because it's quite impossible to bore a German. You cannot entertain a Norwegian, you cannot bore a German, and you cannot educate an American or a chimpanzee. — Stephen Hunter

'New' movies are almost always hipper, faster, they mix genres aggressively, they smother their genre origins in new form, there are fewer of them, and they tend to cost a lot more money because you usually make more money on the megahit than you do on the steady progression of break-eveners. Except for the horror movie. — Stephen Hunter

I have never connected with 'Gone With the Wind.' 'Lawrence of Arabia' leaves me cold. — Stephen Hunter

I remember the early 1980s, when I first got one of these fabulous film critic jobs. The downside was sitting through 'Splatteria III: The Dismembering of the Clampett Clan' or 'The Oklahoma Meatgrinder Massacre' or some such. The headaches unleashed by watching attractive kids die week after week after week cannot be imagined. — Stephen Hunter

That is why heroes are always so tragic, in the end. They are alone. — Stephen Hunter

he was a man of politics and a man of action. — Stephen Hunter

Since I'm a story-oriented critic, sometimes it's difficult to discuss issues without defining them. At the same time, I try not to give away anything that hasn't been given away in first half, in TV commercials, or that isn't obvious from the set-up of the movie. My editors are aware of this tendency of mine and read carefully for spoilers. — Stephen Hunter

The true mystery of the JFK assassination isn't 'How could the bullet go through two people with only slight damage?' but 'Why did the third bullet explode?' — Stephen Hunter

The squiggly rubber Davy Jones face in 'Pirates' with the tentacles, barnacles and goobers - that's modeled on me. — Stephen Hunter

Considered purely as effects-driven filmed drama, 'The Day After Tomorrow' checks in somewhere in the middle of one of Hollywood's most absurd and least lamented dead genres, the disaster pic of the '70s. It's a little better than 'Earthquake' but not as good as 'The Towering Inferno,' because it doesn't star Steve McQueen and Paul Newman. — Stephen Hunter

Having a better and more productive life than my monster father has been my most significant accomplishment. — Stephen Hunter

The director of 'Independence Day,' 'Godzilla' and 'The Patriot' has certain attributes, all of which are given full vent in 'The Day After Tomorrow.' He's crude, stupid, slick, cornball, predictable, laughable, relentless, trivial and, the sum of all these, ridiculous. He's never made a movie you could believe and he still hasn't. — Stephen Hunter

I kind of figured if I couldn't get a job as a dwarf, looking as I do, I should just give up acting. — Stephen Hunter

You better be good, sonny, because I may be old, but I'm still who I always was. I'm the sniper. — Stephen Hunter