American Movies Quotes & Sayings

I didn't watch a lot of American television growing up. I just liked to read a lot and watch movies - movies, movies, and more movies. My family used to make fun of me because I'd like every movie I saw. — Joss Whedon

We want to be seen as more than just martial artists, or bad stereotype token roles in American TV and movies. — Dat Phan

The most interesting of the classic movie genres to me are the indigenous ones: the Western, which was born on the Frontier, the Gangster Film, which originated in the East Coast cities, and the Musical, which was spawned by Broadway. They remind me of jazz: they allowed for endless, increasingly complex, sometimes perverse variations. When these variations were played by the masters, they reflected the changing times; they gave you fascinating insights into American culture and the American psyche. — Martin Scorsese

Movies that are subtitled don't usually do as well in American theatres. — David Benioff

The scene of independent cinema is already a large scene in America, and not in a negative way, but it's cluttered. It's very populated with just American films, so the room left for foreign movies is not extremely vast. The American public also does not really read. They don't read subtitles. But we're like that in Canada, too. — Xavier Dolan

One of the grotesqueries of present-day American life is the amount of reasoning that goes into displaying the wisdom secreted in bad movies while proving that modern art is meaningless. They have put into practice the notion that a bad art work cleverly interpreted according to some obscure Method is more rewarding than a masterpiece wrapped in silence. — Harold Rosenberg

I loved movies as a teenager and saw as much American cinema as I could, but I hated the English films of the early '60s and had absolutely no point of identification with them. — Stephen Rea

According to the American Psychological Association, the most effective stress-relief strategies are exercising or playing sports, praying or attending a religious service, reading, listening to music, spending time with friends or family, getting a massage, going outside of ra walk, meditating or doing yoga, and spending time with a creative hobby. (The least effective strategies are gambling, shopping, smoking, drinking, eating, playing video games, surfing the Internet, and watching TV or movies for more than two hours. — Kelly McGonigal

One of the most interesting things, at least for me, are the soundtracks for 'The Social Network' and 'Drive.' Basically, it's what I did in 'American Gigolo.' I could have done the music for those movies blindfolded. And one of them won an Oscar, and the other is this massive soundtrack. — Giorgio Moroder

Now." After Ifemelu hung up, still amused, she decided to change the title of her blog to Raceteenth or Various Observations About American Blacks (Those Formerly Known as Negroes) by a Non-American Black. Job Vacancy in America - National Arbiter in Chief of "Who Is Racist" In America, racism exists but racists are all gone. Racists belong to the past. Racists are the thin-lipped mean white people in the movies about the civil rights era. Here's the thing: the manifestation of racism has changed but the language has not. So if you haven't — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

If the American public is so into morality in movies, why don't they throw more of their disposable income at religious-themed entertainment? For every 'Passion of the Christ,' there's a 'Fireproof' that comes and goes with no notice. — John Ridley

What I fell in love with as a child was 'My Fair Lady,' 'Funny Face,' 'American in Paris,' and 'Singin' in the Rain.' Just perfect movies to me and I was dancing. I started ballet when I was three. And I fell in love with those movies and fell in love with Audrey Hepburn and Leslie Caron. — Dianna Agron

Wait a second," Andy said, snapping his fingers. "You're Vietnamese." "Don't say it," Sun warned. But Andy, a grin stretched across his face, couldn't resist. "You're a Vietnam vet." Sun's face became even harder, something Andy hadn't thought possible. "Never heard that one before. Open the pen there." Andy lifted the latch on the gate and Sun led the sheep out of the pen and over to the entrance door. "I've visited Viet Nam twice," Andy said. "Beautiful place. All of those war movies make it look like hell, but it's actually very tranquil, don't you think?" "I wouldn't know. I've never been there. I'm an American. — Lee Goldberg

When we talk about Oscars, it's almost as a symbol of excellence, and the American public and the worldwide public accept that symbol. So, a movie like 'The Artist' that costs $14 million, has to go out and compete with movies that cost $140 million. How does David deal with Goliath? — Harvey Weinstein

The risk for me has to do with the nudity aspects. I'm an American actress in mainstream movies, and I would like to always be able to do them. For some reason, nudity is perceived differently here than it is elsewhere, and I didn't want to lose any American audience that I was building. — Amanda Seyfried

Too many poets act like a middle-aged mother trying to get her kids to eat too much cooked meat, and potatoes with drippings (tears). I don't give a damn whether they eat or not. Forced feeding leads to excessive thinness (effete). Nobody should experience anything they don't need to, if they don't need poetry bully for them. I like the movies too. And after all, only Whitman and Crane and Williams, of the American poets, are better than the movies. — Frank O'Hara

I also have experience working with American producer Roger Corman who knows a lot of secrets in making movies look bigger than their budget. — Timur Bekmambetov

There's this little box that African-American actors have to work in, in the first place, and I was able to rise above that box. I could have done a bunch of movies where I stayed as the Axel Foley or Reggie Hammond persona. But I didn't want to be doing the same thing all the time. Every now and then, you crash and burn, but that's part of it. — Eddie Murphy

We have to make movies where we do not think this is for the American market or this is for the Chinese market. We have to make a good movie that anyone would just want to sit down and watch because love, language, culture transcend everything. — Michelle Yeoh

The truth is, everything we know about America, everything Americans come to know about being American, isn't from the news. I live there. We don't go home at the end of the day and think, "Well, I really know who I am now because the Wall Street Journal says that the Stock Exchange closed at this many points." What we know about how to be who we are comes from stories. It comes from the novels, the movies, the fashion magazines. It comes from popular culture. — Chris Abani

I get a lot of dark scripts now. I don't wanna be stuck doing movies like American Pie. For someone my age, once you get started doing them, it's hard to get out. — Agnes Bruckner

'Sunset Boulevard' - the story of Hollywood movies draped on a depressing sex affair - is an uncompromising study of American decadence displaying a sad, worn, methodical beauty few films have had since the late twenties. — Manny Farber

Where I come from, it was a heresy to say you wanted to be in movies, leave alone American movies. — Daniel Day-Lewis

I think I'm actually a mainstream, popcorn-eating kid. I've always been that, so I'd sit there watching action movies and American moves before I watch other movies quite often because I am that kid. But I've pushed into the more alternative area because that's where it gets really interesting creatively. — Eddie Izzard

We have a thriving subculture of 'independent' American movies that makes an impact on America as a whole roughly equivalent to that of a the modern literary novel. These are the films sincere viewers marry, whereas, once upon a time, movies were a lifetime of one night stands. — Edward Jay Epstein

I look at American movies, the big muscles, and try to apply that to Chinese film-making. — Ang Lee

I still remember 1997 when I made the movie 'Storm Riders;' that moment, a lot of American producers want to hire me to make movies in the States. — Andrew Lau

Even though I studied in New York and I know the American system, I come from France where I learned that with movies in France where the director is king. There's no such thing as a studio edit. It's the director's cut, period. — Louis Leterrier

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. — Barbara Hershey

Even some of us who make movies underestimate their influence abroad. American movies sell American culture. Foreigners want to see American movies. But that's also why so many foreign governments and groups object to them. — Irwin Winkler

I think as an American society, when we're paying too many taxes or dealing with war, we don't want to see sad things at the movies. — Zoe Saldana

Home is what we know we ought to want but can't really take. America is not so much a home for anyone as a universal dream of home, a wish whose attraction depends upon its remaining at the level of a wish. The movies bring the boys back but stop as soon as they get them back; for home, that vaunted, all-American ideal, is a sort of death, and an oblique justification for all the wandering that kept you away from it for so long. — Michael Wood

The ghastly mother-in-law is well represented by a little comedy film of 1952: No Room for the Groom, directed by Douglas Sirk, the fine German director more famous for his melodramas that humanely criticize American morals and values. — Jeanine Basinger

Secret societies ... like the Skulls or the Free Masons?"
"What do you know about them?" he asked, feeling me out.
"Limited. I've seen a couple of movies with Johnny Depp and Paul Walker a while back. They're societies that have high influence over things like the American and foreign governments. — Nicole Gulla

Movies are one of the bad habits that have corrupted our century. They have slipped into the American mind more misinformation in one evening than the Dark Ages could muster in a decade. — Ben Hecht

I was a strange, dark little dude. I fell in love with horror movies, at a very early age. Somehow, as a first grader, I was able to convince my parents to let me go see stuff like 'An American Werewolf in London' in theaters, so I was headed in that direction anyway. — James Roday

The quality of American patents has been deteriorating for years; they are increasingly issued for products and processes that are not truly innovative - things like the queuing system for Netflix, which was patented in 2003. Yes, it makes renting movies a snap, but was it really a breakthrough deserving patent protection? — Robert Pozen

The corporate system dictates what gets made, and the movies are so bad because of the economic structure of Hollywood. The big business takeover of Hollywood is at fault rather than American storytellers - it's what keeps textured movies from getting made. — James Gray

American Pie' was a big movie for me. No one knew it at the time, but it allowed me to be offered such movies as 'Like Mike' and 'New York Minute' with the Olsen twins — Eugene Levy

I like looking back at people's faces in the dark. I like noticing details that no one else sees. But I hate it in the old American movies when drivers don't watch the road. — Jean-Pierre Jeunet

'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. — James McAvoy

I got to learn from the American audience. Hearing what it is they're not getting. These are audiences, 35 to 40, an older demographic that controls seven to 10 trillion dollars. And the producers and distributors have convinced themselves this group doesn't go to the movies. — Peter Riegert

Hollywood movies of the Fifties, like The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur, with their epic clash of pagan and Judeo-Christian cultures, tell more about art and society than the French-infatuated ideologues who have made a travesty of the best American higher criticism. — Camille Paglia

You know, every country needs another country to mock, and Australians seem to be pretty good at impersonating American people. Maybe it's because all the movies and music and TV you see there is from America, so we just have the knack for it. — Callan McAuliffe

I was lucky that one of my first movies, 'One Million Years B.C.' was made in Europe by a British company. The Brits, and a lot of the rest of Europe, seemed to really love exotic women. The fact that I was American and exotic just made me more appealing to them. — Raquel Welch

It's like our go-to notion of innocent and secure mythology of American life. I was always amazed when people would come up to me and say that 'Far from Heaven' was exactly what it was like back then. [laughs] I was so disinterested in what it was 'really like' in the 1950s when I was putting the film together, I was only interested in what it was like in movies. — Todd Haynes

The baby boom produced a fresh batch of American youngsters -- teenagers they were called -- and they were suddenly coming of age. But until Roman Holiday, it was hard for them to see themselves in the movies. What Audrey offered -- namely to the girls -- was a glimpse of someone who lived by her own code of interests, not her mother's, and who did so with a wholesome independence of spirit. — Sam Wasson

As a newcomer to America who learned to 'speak American' by watching movies, I firmly believe that to change the politics of immigration and citizenship, we must change culture - the way we portray undocumented people like me and our role in society. — Jose Antonio Vargas

Foreigners have a complex set of associations in their minds when they think of America - from Iraq to 9/11, certainly, but also from Coke to jeans. It is entirely possible for people around the world to love American products, American books, American movies, American music, and dislike the policies of the government of America. — Shashi Tharoor

Two-thirds of American movies are extensions of commercials
they tell you how to feel and they tell you how to think
rather than letting you figure it out on your own. — Alan Arkin

I love scary movies. I like American Horror Story. That is more of a series, but it is really good. — Daniel Jacobs

In Malaysia, where Western culture was extremely influential, I'd grown up listening to Elvis and the Beatles and watching American movies. People wanted to be like Americans. In contrast, when I got here, I saw prosperous middle-class American college students wanting to somehow join the Third World. — Feisal Abdul Rauf

On Slavery: The saddest slap in the face is we have NO monument, no real statues or memorials, no special day of Atonement or Remembrance (NOT ONE), no thanks for 400+ years of free labor, forced servitude across the Trans-Atlantic, ass beatings, buying ourselves and families out of slavery, rape and plunder ... but everyone else has monuments, special museums, and even movies. This is what America thinks of black people, so-called black president and all, who has been largely silent on this subject ... we'll even celebrate Leprechauns, Easter Bunnies, and Secretary's Day before we acknowledge our history. — Brandi L. Bates

I'd like to make really important movies, like American Beauty. I was really proud to be a part of that movie. — Allison Janney

My love for American music and American movies is from an early age. I was 10 or 11 when I heard Fats Domino and Little Richard and Buddy Holly. And the movies, my dad used to take my brother and I to the movies every Friday. It was incredible: we got to see just about every movie that came out for a period of years. — Ian McLagan

A landmark 2007 report by the American Psychological Association (APA) found girls being sexualized--or treated as "objects of sexual desire... as things rather than as people with legitimate sexual feelings of their own"--in virtually every form of media, including movies, television, music videos and lyrics, video games and the Internet, advertising, cartoons, clothing, and toys. Even Dora the Explorer, once a cute, square-bodied child, got a makeover to make her look more svelte and "hot. — Nancy Jo Sales

I don't think people have been able to deal with the fact that African American filmmakers can make movies about life and relationships. — Tim Robbins

Movies were America's way of softening up the rest of the world, Hollywood relentlessly assaulting the mental defenses of audiences with the hit, the smash, the spectacle, the blockbuster, and, yes, even the box office bomb. It mattered not what story these audiences watched. The point was that it was the American story they watched and loved, up until the day that they themselves might be bombed by the planes they had seen in American movies. — Viet Thanh Nguyen

It's a cliche, but Americans are puritanical. In their movies, they are scared of sex, but they overindulge in violence. I could have cut a G-rated version of 'Y Tu Mama Tambien' that would have pleased the American ratings board, but it would have been five minutes long. — Alfonso Cuaron

That was an ordinary way for a patriotic American to talk back then. It's hard to believe how sick of war we used to be.[ ... ]We used to call armaments manufacturers "Merchants of Death."
Can you imagine that?
Nowadays, of course, just about our only solvent industry is the merchandising of death, bankrolled by our grandchildren, so that the message of our principal art forms, movies and television and political speeches and newspaper columns, for the sake of the economy, simply has to be this: War is hell, all right, but the only way a boy can become a man is in a shoot-out of some kind, preferably, but by no means necessarily, on a battlefield. — Kurt Vonnegut

I remember my first taste of American big movies was 'Ghost Rider.' I'm in two little scenes. But for those two little scenes they had 400 extras, upside-down stunt cars, and a fire brigade. — Rebel Wilson

American movies are often very good at mining those great underlying myths that make films robustly travel across class, age, gender, culture. — Tom Hooper

I think every American actor wants to be a movie star. But I never wanted to do stupid movies, I wanted to do films. — Kevin Kline

America does four things better than any other country in the world: rock music, movies, software and high-speed pizza delivery. All of these are sacred American art forms. — Courtney Love

My grandmother, when she looked at American movies, she said, 'They're all the same. In the first scene somebody shoots somebody and then everybody makes phone calls.' — Marina Abramovic

I only drive in movies. I know that's very weird to hear for an American. I have a weird relationship with it. I know how to drive, but I never went to take the test. — Penelope Cruz

If Hollywood and Bollywood were how we all lived our lives, that would surprise me. And yet it's often the way our cultures are conveyed, isn't it? People watching a Bollywood movie in some other part of Asia think everybody in India is beautiful and they have dramatic lives and happy endings. And if you were to watch American TV and our movies you'd think that we don't wear clothes and we spend all our time fighting with each other. — Hillary Clinton

The treatment of African and African American culture in our education was no different from their treatment in Tarzan movies. — Ishmael Reed

If I would want to have a huge audience, I would make American movies, not French movies, because there is a limit of course with French language. If I prefer to shoot in my own language, it is to play with my language, to play in my Paris, and I have complete freedom in France. It's so amazing. If American directors could imagine how free I am, they would have asked for political asylum immediately. — Jean-Pierre Jeunet

This was the Mecca of the American Dream, the world that everyone wanted. A world of sleek young women (allied with Slenderella to be so) in shorts and halters, driving 400-horsepower station wagons to air-conditioned, music-serenaded supermarkets of baby-sitter corporations and culture condensed into Great Books discussion groups. A life of barbecues by the swimming pool and drive in movies open all year. It did't appeal to me. Fuck health insurance plans and life insurance. They wanted to live without leaving the womb. It made me more alive to play a game without rules against society, and I was prepared to play it to the end. A tremor almost sexual passed through me as I anticipated the comming robbery. — Edward Bunker

They might watch American movies, wear American clothes, even read American books but Bush and the Iraq War have made actual American people social lepers; she only has to open her mouth in some places to feel a wave of loathing directed at her. Katie is weary of pointing out that at least half her countrymen detest their President even more than Europe does, but it's no good. — Amanda Craig

In France, it's always about life, normal life. We always stick with these realistic things. So when French people are dreaming about American movies, they go and see the thrillers, and Westerns, and science fiction, huge entertaining movies. — Berenice Bejo

For some strange reason we don't go to charming, light movies anymore. People expect a movie to be heavy and turgid, like "American Beauty." We've become a heavy-handed society. — Pauline Kael

I think every American kid grows up dreaming about being in the movies. That's completely normal for us. But I mostly wanted to be a writer, and I got taught the scriptwriting program. — David Labrava

The thing is there have been American movies that are similar to Solaris, like Alien had a lot of things that are similar, although it's also got the horror element. — Alex Winter

It's a big problem for American movies that all their movies are produced to be global. — Timur Bekmambetov

Every time I make a picture the critics' estimate of American public taste goes down ten percent. — Cecil B. DeMille

I was sick and tired of being an English actor who did a lot of American movies because I was cheap and good. — Daniel Craig

I grew up watching American movies. My favorite movies have always been American, since as long as I can remember. I always had this huge respect for American filmmakers and American actors. — Noomi Rapace

I've never understood the cult of Hitchcock. Particularly the late American movies ... Egotism and laziness. And they're all lit like television shows. — Orson Welles

You don't watch many movies, do you?"
"Fraid not," he said. "I never had much interest in movies. 'Sides that, the nearest cinema was almost two hours from my home."
"What about cable TV?"
"No cable."
"Satellite?"
"Nope."
"No Internet either?"
He shook his head.
"Are you serious?" she asked, incredulous. "How did you ever survive?"
"Where I come from, there was always something more interesting to do outside."
"And where was that?" she asked. "Mars? — Victoria Vane

Interesting Fact: During World War II Germans could spot American spies when they sat in this L Cross position. It became popular in the states after cowboys in Western movies used it, but had not caught on in Germany. — Vanessa Edwards

I've done all kinds of movies, but I wanna do some more independent films that are not your run-of-the-mill type movies like 'American Splendor', which I had a big part in, that are really trying to do something unique. — Judah Friedlander

The whole world loves American movies, blue jeans, jazz and rock and roll. It is probably a better way to get to know our country than by what politicians or airline commercials represent. — Billy Joel

It's very difficult to get any movies done about Black heroes - Haitian or American - in Hollywood. The argument in Hollywood is that there is no market for those movies, and that is not true. — Jimmy Jean-Louis

In a business that has exploited and ignored our people I have only found dead-ends. We need romantic comedies, gross-out and mockery comedies, horror and thrillers, teen movies and love-stories. All these and more will be a positive step towards the future of Native Americans in the world and film industry; an industry that that offers us not only the chance to play the parts of heroes, love interests and warriors, but also of villains, dorks and dangerous, brokenhearted products of circumstance. — Misty Upham

I guess maybe I try to make movies that are closer to real life than are many Hollywood movies. But I still try to stay within a commercial narrative, a contemporary American vernacular. — Alexander Payne

It's like everybody is obsessed with Hollywood movies worldwide. And even though everybody hates the Americans, they're still watching American movies. — Roland Emmerich

African American women in particular have incredible buying power. Statistically, we go to the movies more than anyone. We have made Tyler Perry's career. His films open with $25 million almost consistently. — Lynn Nottage

I walked out on American Gangster: this evil piece of dreck. Defenders of this junk say that these movies give Black actors jobs. So did "Birth of a Nation." — Ishmael Reed

I didn't go to Paris until I was a grown-up in 1965. And when I went to Paris, it was the Paris I knew only from American movies. — Woody Allen

The movies are one of the bad habits that corrupted our century.Of their many sins, I offer as the worst their effect on the intellectual side of the nation. It is chiefly from that viewpoint I write of them - as an eruption of trash that has lamed the American mind and retarded Americans from becoming a cultured people. — Ben Hecht

I started in movies in Mexico and started doing telenovelas in Mexico. 'American Family' was the first thing I did in English. — Kate Del Castillo

Citizen Kane is perhaps the one American talking picture that seems as fresh now as the day it opened. It may seem even fresher. — Pauline Kael

I've made it my mission to make movies starring African American actors and about the African American experience and put them in the mainstream. They're very universal stories I've told - every movie I've done. — Malcolm D. Lee

If TV sitcoms idealized the American suburbs of the 1960s, the works of the artistic elite disparaged them ceaselessly, then and now. The songs of Pete Seeger, novels like Revolutionary Road, the stories of John Cheever, movies like Pleasantville and American Beauty, television series like Mad Men: in all of them, that long-ago land of lawns and houses is depicted as a country of stultifying conformity and cultural emptiness, sexual hypocrisy, alcoholism, and spiritual despair. Privilege murders the senses there, the creatives tell us. Gender roles strangle freedom. Family life turns the heart of adventure to ashes. There's bigotry and gossip and dangerous liaisons behind every closed door. Oh, the soul, the human soul! In the suburbs of fiction, she is forever dying. But — Andrew Klavan

As one descendant of a black cowboy explained, "We didn't write the books. We didn't produce the movies. So we were politely deleted." There is a conspicuous absence of the black cowboy recorded in the history of the American cattle-ranching industry. The role these men played in the settling of the Old West deserves scholarly attention.
As — Tricia Martineau Wagner

I think it's that thing of growing up all the time watching American movies and listening to American music. It hits you in a way that's a lot purer because you are not in that culture that you're watching. — Ben Mendelsohn

All of my favourite actors are American and I grew up watching American movies. It's weird I used to do a New Jersey accent in every audition in America, because I liked it. It's completely bizarre and everybody would ask: 'Where are you from?' And I would say: 'Oh, I'm from London!' — Robert Pattinson

In Chinese culture, it wouldn't occur to kids to question or talk back to their parents. In American culture, kids in books, TV shows and movies constantly score points with their snappy back talk. Typically, it's the parents who need to be taught a life lesson - by their children. — Amy Chua