Film Studio Quotes & Sayings

On a studio film, you don't have to worry about running out of film or messing up your costumes; you have five other sets of it. Studio films make you the most comfortable so you can just act. — Sung Kang

I had just finished reading The Day of the Locust when this piece was brought to my attention, and I was like, "How do you create art in the system, the way it is?" Looking around the studio film landscape, there are all of these great superhero movies, which is fantastic, especially for my kids, but it's hard to find real art house films in the studio system, these days. — Matt Bomer

To do a studio film, something with Disney. My father is thrilled. — Sam Riley

With every action oriented or adventure film, there's going to be a moment when every actor becomes a stuntman and every stuntman becomes an actor. You try to do as much of it as you can, but inevitably the studio wants you to finish the movie. So you've got to slow down and you're really got to defer to your team to make sure you do. — Nicolas Cage

The studio should not have released this film. — Joel Siegel

After the war, there was no industry. We lost the war. We had our whole city destroyed. No money. No studio. No film. No camera. No equipment. We would shoot in the street. We had no actors. Nothing. But we wanted to do movies. And we did the best movies in the world. — Dino De Laurentiis

I really do like the independent way of working. You don't get much studio intrusion compared to when you're working on a big Hollywood film where there tends to always be loads of people interfering. The only problem, though, with independent features is that they are hard to sell. — Steven Bauer

I hope to build not the largest film and media studio in the world, but perhaps one of the coolest and also the most inclusive. — Rony Abovitz

In Hollywood, story content of movies follows a hierarchy of power, not the relative quality of various ideas. Hollywood does not lack for quality writing. It's just that quality writing commonly has to be sacrificed in order to propel a film into production. A studio needs a star and a director to make a film, so those are the folk who'll define the content. If they don't have the same creative sensibilities, then the content will change. — Terry Rossio

It irritates me so much the way people talk about soaps because it is far more difficult working on a soap than it is on a big studio film. — Margot Robbie

The problem with doing a schlocky or big budget studio film is that it wouldn't actually be fun for me. It wouldn't be exciting. — David Cronenberg

I definitely want to study film. I'd like to have my own studio one day and just make a lot of movies. — Alexander Ludwig

With literary fiction, generally a film maker falls in love with a book. In commercial fiction, it's a producer or studio falling in love with a book they can make into a movie with worldwide appeal. — Robert Gottlieb

If I get a note on my script or my films, what I say to a studio executive is that, 'You know, this is the film of my legacy, and I never want to be sitting in a theater looking up on the screen and seeing something that I don't believe in.' I will never do that. — Gina Prince-Bythewood

There's nothing like a good ol' film light in a fogged up studio. — Harald Zwart

There's not one film that I've ever made that could get made today by a studio, not one - even 'A Few Good Men' because it's an adult courtroom drama, and studios do not make them any more. And so every movie that I make, have made and will make is always going be independently financed. — Rob Reiner

Once you work with a studio on a film, the studio is sort of like this enormous clam that just opens, takes everything and then closes, and no one enters again. They own it all. — Don Bluth

I acted in theater and I took film classes when I was 12 and just obsessed over it. I loved it and spent hours and hours in the film studio learning and watching. — Mary Elizabeth Winstead

I was the enemy of the major studio. I believed in one man - one film. I believed one man should make the film. And I believed the director should be that one man. One man should do it - I didn't give a damn who. I just couldn't accept art as a committee. I could only accept art as an extension of an individual. — Frank Capra

Well, I've been on stage my whole life. Also, when you're doing music videos, a lot of people don't understand. They think you just go up there, do the song, and they film the video. You do it like a jillion times before that though. Same thing in the studio. — Glenn Danzig

I love good film, whether it's an independent or studio film. The independent films, I think the good ones aren't necessarily eccentric ones but they're the more specific ones. — Matthew McConaughey

Hollywood Rule:

RULE #1: You only need a license to do three things in the film business: blow up a building, wash someone's hair, or drive a truck. You need no license, certification, documentation, or, for that matter, any filmmaking experience to be a writer, producer, director, actor, or even a studio executive. All you need is money. — David Marder

'Mr. and Mrs. Smith' - every scene is from those characters' point of view. They're in literally every scene, very unusual in a big studio film. — Doug Liman

I've always been curious what the negotiation is because obviously there's certain movies that every film wants a trailer on, like Star Wars, and I don't know how Disney makes the decisions as to what it does and doesn't put on there. I'm assuming that whatever movies are the same studio as the film get first priority, but then everybody else is fighting for the remaining spots. — Simon Kinberg

Most films I work on, the people making the film are constantly second-guessing the executives of the studio, the producer, and the audience. It is very hard to accomplish anything in that situation. — Carter Burwell

The big studio era is from the coming of sound until 1950, until I came in ... I came in at a crux in film, which was the end of the studio era and the rise of filmmaking. — Charlton Heston

The film, even when we were making it in that budget range, which was really a coup - we got it made because we pitched it to the studio head, Joe Roth. — Alex Winter

I phoned Joe Roth, who was head of the studio at the time, and told him how beautiful the film was, and that I was fully ready to support it, that Michael's work was wonderful and I imagined that Daniel would feel the same. He listened quietly and read between the lines. — Madeleine Stowe

I have visualizations where I'm living in a really cool place - probably outside of town - with a really dope studio where I can record music or film things. Just have my own mini production house. That's really the thing I'd love to end up with the most and only do gigs when I needed to and also amass a little bit of a crew around me. — Reggie Watts

The actor that taught me the most was Bernie Mac. I did my first big budget studio film with he and Angela Bassett, 'Mr. 3000' for Disney. Bernie taught me by example what creates success is humility and hard work. — Brian J. White

I never thought I was particularly good looking. But when I see old photographs, I realise that I was. I do wish I had known that at the time because beauty is power. I didn't realise how lucky I was to be young, beautiful and in Hollywood. It didn't hit me. Every day I woke up, went to the film studio and just got on with it. — Joan Collins

Jaxton smiled and caught his hand, holding it tight in both of his. "Are you burnt out? Is it all too much?" he asked, getting straight to the root of the matter, in one go.
"Yes," he sighed, hating that it was true.
"Then you'll stay home."
"You know I can't. It's impossible," Roman complained about the unfairness of it all.
He was due to return to the studio in two days times, to finalise the tracks he'd recorded yesterday. Then he had to sit down with Jalen next week, to pick out a new piece of his artwork for the next album cover. And two weeks after that, he had three interviews with three different music channels, to film.
"Try telling that to Ben." Jaxton winked at him, then ducked down to kiss him.

~ From the Heart — Elaine White

When I lived in New York, there wasn't as much TV or film around. I got asked to do a couple of indie films, just based on me being from The Smashing Pumpkins and A Perfect Circle. I did a couple of indie movies from Japan and one from Canada, and I thought it was an exciting, fun thing to do. I had a great time doing it, it was just that, in New York, there really wasn't as much. My studio in New York closed, so I moved out to L.A. and just started looking into composing as another thing to do, as a musician. I like it a lot. It's fun and it's a different way of thinking about music. — James Iha

Nowadays, if a studio assumes that his film is bad, there is always an executive that gets more nervous than usual and thinks that if they change the music, the film will become a masterpiece. — Maurice Jarre

For a time, the press lord William Randolph Hearst did everything in his vast powers to keep the film "Citizen Kane" from finding an audience. He intimidated theater owners, refused to let ads run in his newspapers, and even pressured studio sycophants to destroy the negative. At first, the titan of San Simeon had his way: the film faded from view after a splashy initial release. But over the years, "Citizen Kane" came to be recognized for the masterpiece it is, and now regularly tops lists as the greatest film ever made. — Anonymous

Independent film is such a huge deal in the UK. There aren't many big budget studio movies that get greenlit at all. The indie film industy is a great opportunity that I'm trying to seize. — Aml Ameen

I guess for major film industry players a film is a money making devise, so using formulas assures them that their investment will have returns. A lot of big studio films are created by formulas and committees, stripping away any individuality or personality from the work so that they could appeal to most everyone on there planet but to no one in particular. — Signe Baumane

Kurosawa was one of film's true greats ... His ability to transform a vision into a powerful work of art is unparalleled. So it seemed appropriate to name the new digital studio for him. — George Lucas

Pre-preproduction is the tenuous time before a project is greenlit; before the studio commits to spending real money. This is the most vulnerable period for any film because it's the time when your project is most likely to be put into turnaround. That's film-speak for killed off. — Peter Jackson

The U.K. needs more first class studio space to encourage the growth of the film and TV sector. — Eric Fellner

I've never done a big studio film, I've only ever done little ones. — Brenda Blethyn

But I feel that I have a responsibility to help the film and I have relations with the studio and with those who put up the money so that I can tell a story that I believe in. — Kevin Spacey

'Glee Project' and 'Glee' have the same spirit, but they're both harder in their own ways. With 'Glee Project,' there's more pressure because you're being judged in everything you do. When you film 'Glee,' you go to the studio and have an off day, and it's OK - you're still going to be there; you take as many chances as you need. — Samuel Larsen

Consider: for all the gobbledegook [film studio] executives spout about backstory, all that we, the audience, want to know is what happens next. That's the only thing that's going on ... Character is nothing other than action, and character-driven means The plot stinks, and you'd better hope the star is popular enough to open the movie in spite of it. — David Mamet

I'm just looking for the best story being told by the best people and the best part that I can find. If those things add up, I want to be a part of it whether it's a studio film or, more likely in that instance, an independent film. — John Hawkes

The struggle of making a film for any studio is the fact that the producers and the studio have an idea of what the movie should be, but that is especially the case when the director is being replaced three weeks before principal photography. The challenge for me was to make sure that was my version of 'The Wolfman.' And I've done that. I think. — Joseph E. Johnston

I guess, you make a big studio film, you spend a lot of money on it and you hope people go see it. It's really risky. — John Slattery

I think these are such different films that it's hard to compare, because with Quentin we were all just like, it was like a party every day, you know, it was like that film was just like silly, it was just really for fun, it was really, it wasn't, you know, to make a huge impact. I t was just we wanted to have fun and go to work every day and do a fun movie. And this is like huge, I mean, this is like huge studio film, there's a ton of action, it's like really hard work. — Mary Elizabeth Winstead

The feature film business, the studio film business, feels to me like there's just nowhere else to go. It's like a record that's just skipping at the end, with the needle stuck in the run-out groove. — Matthew Specktor

There's very few directors I think in this industry that would pitch to a studio that they wanted to do a multi-layered almost at times existential high action, high drama surreal film that's sort of locked in his mind. And then have an opportunity to do that. — Christopher Nolan

Think about trailers you see in theaters. If you're seeing a Warner Bros film, the studio might have three of the five trailers. So having a hit helps you create the next hit. — Anita Elberse

I have a company in the U.K., a performance-capture studio. We're looking to push the boundaries of performance-capture technology in film and video games, but also in live theater, using real-time performance capture with actors onstage, and combining that with holographic imagery. — Andy Serkis

I don't have any expectations about my films. If they're good, they're good - if they're not, they're not. About 10 years ago, I remember going to see one of my movies - I can't even remember which one now - and everyone was jumping up and down, getting excited, saying what a great film it was going to be. We all went in and watched it, and it was the slowest movie I've ever seen. The next day, the reviews were terrible and half the studio was fired. — Anthony Hopkins

If film critics could destroy a movie, Michael Bay and Adam Sandler would be working at Starbucks. If film critics could make a movie a hit, the Dardenne brothers would be courted by every studio in town. — Alonso Duralde

I heard today (April 5) was the day Kurt passed away 17 years ago. Can't believe it's been that long. So grateful for his contribution and inspiration. Not sure I'd be doing this if it weren't for him. He gave us all permission to create no matter what our skill set and reminded me that dreams are possible. Thanks for that. This made me recall a short piece of film I shot when I heard they were making a film celebrating his life. I made it to explore the character and explore creative possibilities. I never sent it to the studio or to anyone but thought I'd share it now — Jared Leto

Oftentimes, when you have a huge studio film and you have big names attached, they like to keep attaching big names. — Taraji P. Henson

You see a Clint Eastwood movie, and you might not know if it's from Universal or Warner Bros. or another studio. He has affiliations with so many studios now, but there was a time when you'd just look at a movie and think, 'Oh, that's a Warner Bros. film.' — Robert Osborne

But the arbitrary cuts, edits, and other changes the studio bosses made before releasing that movie were a bitter lesson for my friend, who valued creative control of his work as paramount. When he went on to make a movie based on another script of his own, a big Hollywood studio offered him a standard deal whereby the studio financed the project and held the power to change the film before its release. He refused the deal - his artistic integrity was more important. Instead my friend "bought" creative control by going off on his own and putting every penny of his profits from the first film into this second project. When he was almost done, his money ran out. He went looking for loans, but bank after bank turned him down. Only a last-minute loan from the tenth bank he implored saved the project. The film was Star Wars. — Daniel Goleman

One summer when Carol was attending day camp, Greta had an affair with a man named Mel Carter. He was an Eastern publicity representative for a film studio, and often instructed dinner parties to which we went in those days with accounts of the movies' coming of age. 'We have a picture coming up,' he said once, 'in which a character says "son of a bitch." Lots of exciting things are happening. Still, it's only a beginning. Much remains to be done. — Peter De Vries

In the studio system, things are expected of a film. By the first, second, third act, there's a generic language that comes out of the more commercial system. — Ralph Fiennes

'Flying Down to Rio' established RKO as a leader in musical film production throughout the 1930s. The film helped to rescue the studio from its financial straits and it gave a real boost to my movie career. — Ginger Rogers

I think 3D is a great innovation for the film business. But I hope it's not the thing that kills the golden egg because what's happening now is every movie there's pressure from the studio to turn it into a 3D movie. — Neal H. Moritz

I'm not interested in making a $60-million studio film with a bunch of 24-year-olds telling me what to do. — Bruce Campbell

I record all of my music with authentic instruments in a studio before we start editing, doing many, many versions. The music shapes the film as we edit so it has an organic relationship to the content. — Ken Burns

A big budget studio film is slower, they've got so much to create around you. Everything is more complicated. — Iain Glen

It's a great privilege just to be in a film not because you're some packaging that some agent has done with the studio exec: "We need a John Travolta film." — Stephen Fry

I left the studio at 5:30 in the morning. It's an incredible mind exercise. You have to, obviously, have stamina, but you really feel like you're kind of feeding your mind. It's a challenge of learning lines very fast and then you have to be lose enough to hopefully make good choices in a much shorter amount of time that it takes to film certain scenes. — Glenn Close

Even after I had just done Twilight, which made $400 million at the worldwide box office, I could not get financing for three or four projects that I really loved and I thought people would love because they didn't fit some studio or investor's model of thinking, "This will definitely make money." It's a business and a film does potentially cost millions of dollars, and they have to think that they're going to get their money back somehow. — Catherine Hardwicke

I think quite often when you have a hell of a lot more money and time, as you very much do on a big studio film, you don't necessarily have to make the decisions right there. You can always goback and reshoot it. — Keira Knightley

I don't think the idea of working in Hollywood really exists anymore. I think you work in films, and where the film is shot is where it's shot. The studio system doesn't really exist. — Rupert Friend

There was this billy goat at a movie studio who found and ate a can of film. When a nanny asked him how he liked it, he said, "It was all right but I liked the book better." — Johnny Carson

There are movies that change the whole way in which films are made, like Klute, where Gordon Willis's photography on the film is so textured, and, they said, too dark. At first this was alarming to people, because they're used to a certain way things are done within the studio system. And the studio is selling a product, so they were wary of people thinking that it's too dark. — Martin Scorsese

It is really amazing to be able to do cinematic, big feature style film music on a weekly basis and do it in LA, on a big scoring stage, on a studio lot, and do it with the right players and make it sound great. — Christopher Lennertz

I don't know when the last time was that Steven Spielberg or George Lucas made a movie with Universal, but I can tell you that Universal is leading the charge. They're looking at film differently. They're planning ahead in a way that I've never seen a studio do before. They're believing in a relationship between fan and film franchise, in a new way. They're more receptive to an audience, in part because of social media, in a way we've never been allowed. — Vin Diesel

Writers do the self-censoring before they even get to the studio executive, because they know the film will not run that gauntlet. They, because they want to get their films made, they censor it. — Terry Gilliam

If you do a film with a studio, agents step in, they start saying, 'My actor has to get this amount of money', and it becomes about deals. — Robert Rodriguez

I've only ever gone into studio films with people I really like. — Tilda Swinton

I'm willing to give up a little control but not a lot. So I say I want the money, but when push comes to shove, I'm not sure I'll be able to compromise in order to make the big studio movie. Maybe something in between would be okay, like a low-budget studio film. — Nicole Holofcener

The good thing about the studio is that, when the movie comes out, they will put their marketing and their money behind it, which isn't necessarily true with indie movies, just by the nature of it being an independent film. — Jamie Linden

Charles Laughton, who's a great hero of mine, only ever made one film and it happens to be one of the great films ever, which is 'The Night of the Hunter.' It's full of his kind of imagination and creation and how you do things and just in the way he used the studio, I just thought it was a fantastical way of using the studio. — Brian Cox

And he saw the studio he was about to abandon for his bed as it might have appeared in a documentary film about himself that would reveal to a curious world how a masterpiece was born. — Ian McEwan

Each form of the acting is different. I think it keeps your mind active. TV, film and theater are different disciplines, as are independent films, opposed to studio films. There are differences in the size and the genre, or a period drama as opposed to a contemporary drama, or the types of characters. — Luke Evans

I built the film [Boy and the World] this way. I gathered all the tools I usually use such as brushes, color pencils, crayons, watercolors, and everything else I found in my studio, and I put them on top of a table. I had this feeling of freedom and possibility like if I was this boy. I was using the boy's freedom to create this film. — Alex Abreu

Which is why I felt I was truly blessed this year, with leads in two nice films, and also the luxury of being able to do a studio film and an independent afterwards was fantastic. — Rachel True

For me, something dangerous would be playing thebabe in a huge studio film. That would be terrifying because I'dstink ... I want to explore human beings on as deep a level as I can. — Jennifer Jason Leigh

My cameraman and I devised a method, which we started using from my second film, which applies mainly to day scenes shot in the studio, where we used bounced light instead of direct light. We agreed with this thing of four or five shadows following the actors is dreadful. — Satyajit Ray

'Beyond the Lights' took incredible fight to get made. Four years of writing and two years of overcoming 'no.' Every studio balked. Twice. But I kept fighting. What gave me the courage was 'Love & Basketball.' Every studio turned down that film, too. But I never gave up because I believed in it with my whole heart and soul. — Gina Prince-Bythewood

I think the purpose of test screenings is different for the studio and for the filmmaker. For the studio, I think they want to know whether the film works or not. — Michel Gondry

That's why I'm really trying to produce my own stuff. This film was so good, because I produced it myself, and developed it, and made it with New Line, which is a smaller studio, so I was in control of a lot of stuff that I wasn't in control of for my other films. — Ted Demme

If you can't categorize a film for a studio, it's really difficult for them to wrap their heads around it and give you the money. — Sandra Bullock

You can have ambiguity in television that you are not allowed in film ... at least in Hollywood studio films. — Richard LaGravenese

I have a studio in a barn at home - we rehearse there, we film there and we record there. It's fun to hang out with my guys and see what comes out next. — James Taylor

When any young director gets hired by a studio to do a $125 million film based on a preexisting piece of intellectual property, they're climbing into the meat grinder. And what you're coming out with on the other side is a generic, heavily studio-controlled pile of garbage that ends up on the side of Burger King wrappers. — Neill Blomkamp

Independent film is film that has thought in it. There's no independent thought in studio films. It's collective thought. — Seymour Cassel

When Jobs was losing his footing at Apple in the summer of 1985, he went for a walk with Alan Kay, who had been at Xerox PARC and was then an Apple Fellow. Kay knew that Jobs was interested in the intersection of creativity and technology, so he suggested they go see a friend of his, Ed Catmull, who was running the computer division of George Lucas's film studio. They rented a limo and rode up to Marin County to the edge of Lucas's Skywalker Ranch, where Catmull and his little computer division were based. "I was blown away, and I came back and tried to convince Sculley to buy it for Apple," Jobs recalled. "But the folks running Apple weren't interested, and they were busy kicking me out anyway. — Walter Isaacson

I like the intimacy of independent films and I like the idea that people aren't being paid necessarily as much money as some one on a studio film. — Kim Shaw

With 'Dance Moms' in L.A., we film on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. When we film in Pittsburgh, we film the same days, but we still dance in our studio when we're not filming, so I'm dancing every day except Sunday. — Maddie Ziegler

When the film and music industries declined in the wake of increasingly conservative Muslim laws and social customs in Pakistan, many of these musicians found themselves out of work. They were brought together at Sachal Studios by Izzat Majeed, who built the studio in order to preserve these musical traditions. — Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy

The average development time for a Hollywood movie is nine years. Nine years for a studio film. And a lot of what you do is abstract. — Stephen Gaghan

Hollywood's Studio Era was part of a Golden Age because it didn't need profanity (unlike reality-television today) — Manny Pacheco