Movie Audience Quotes & Sayings

Stand-up is like a movie every night. You write it, direct it, produce it, the audience votes, and you go home. There's nothing more satisfying. — Elayne Boosler

I think everybody's goal was to make something that was really broad for a big audience, which was my goal too. But my main goal was that I wanted my audience to love it, because they're the ones who are going to buy it, and they're the ones who are going to tell their friends. And I wanted to make sure that core audience was really happy, because if they all buy it we have a successful movie. — Shane Dawson

Hollywood provides ready-made fantasies or daydreams; the problem is whether these are productive or nonproductive, whether the audience is psychologically enriched or impoverished. — Hortense Powdermaker

To change man, the audience by which he judges himself must be changed. A man is defined by his audience: by the people, institutions, authors, magazines, movie heroes, philosophers by whom he pictures himself being cheered and booed. — Luke Rhinehart

If actors could actually make a living doing theater, that would be my first choice. Sitcoms are the closest thing to being onstage in front of an audience. If I had to choose, it would be theater and doing the occasional movie once in a while, and spending time doing nothing. — Enrico Colantoni

I love the intimacy and the passion and the danger that go into independent filmmaking. Because it comes out of a creative necessity. It comes from people who really want to make a movie and want to make a difference and want to grab an audience by the gullet and show them something different. — Pierce Brosnan

Films for TV have to be much closer to the book, mainly because the objective with a TV movie that translates literature is to get the audience, after seeing this version, to pick up the book and read it themselves. My attitude is that TV can never really be any form of art, because it serves audience expectations. — Michael Haneke

Last thing you want to do with a good movie is hold the audience hostage. As an entertainer myself, I just know it's better when you leave 'em wanting more than to stick around too long. — Simon Kinberg

I don't think it was me getting rid of any sort of imageI do specific things in my career that are tailored for a specific audience. Obviously I have a younger generation that looks at me - and I really appreciate that. And I just did an animated movie, so I want to respect that and still do things that will earn me that respect. But I also want to do things that challenge me and put me out of my element. — Selena Gomez

The audience cares what the movie looks like, not about the sleepless night you had worrying about the thing getting developed. — James Gray

A film is sort of binary - it either works or it doesn't work. It has nothing to do with how good a job you do. If you bring it up to an adequate level where the audience goes with the movie, then it works, that is all. — George Lucas

In the theater, you're so much more in charge as an actor. For better or for worse, you know what the audience is seeing. But you can be acting your socks off on film, and then you see the movie, and the camera is on the other actor, or they've cut out the lines you thought were significant, or they've adjusted the plot. So much of it is out of your control. — Susan Sarandon

I test the movies a lot, and if the audience says they love the movie, we know we're on the right track. And if they tell me they hate it, I try to figure out what I've done wrong. But every time out, the audience wants me to go deeper, they want to know more about the characters, and they don't want these movies to be shallow. So they really urge me to tell them a complicated story, and then when I do so, they're thrilled — Judd Apatow

Your only guidepost is your own instinct and judicious editing. In my stand-up act I learned that in the first 10 minutes I could say anything and it would get a laugh. Then I'd better deliver. In the movie it's the same thing. You get a lot of laughs when people first sit down and then the story better kick in. Many years in front of an audience, I would hope, give me a sense of what works. — Steve Martin

I think, for a love story, the most important element is the music, since you don't have action sequences or item numbers. It really draws in the audience and adds to at least 70 percent of the opening of the movie. — Ranbir Kapoor

All I mean is, I'm not the kind of audience comedy directors want at a test screening because I seldom laugh, and if I do, it's not very loud. That doesn't mean I don't like the movie. — Todd Solondz

I don't think there has been any increase in sophistication in the audience. When people are aware of a concept that's easy to understand, and there's an actor who will attract them to the theater and it's a movie that's funny three-quarters of the time, it will be successful. — David Zucker

Watching a movie with an audience is so exciting. For me, coming from TV, you finish an episode and then it airs, and I'm at home. There's no gratification and there's no audience interaction with it. — Genndy Tartakovsky

Son-In-Law was kind of my crossover. It was the movie that brought me out of the MTV audience into the mainstream. — Pauly Shore

You never saw Peter Sellers the actor trying to make you laugh. All he was doing was the character. What I'm saying is that I don't think you should know you're in a movie. I don't like it when actors are winking at the audience and saying, 'Right, isn't this funny? Are you with me?' — Steve Carell

I think about the audience in the sense that I serve as my own audience. I have to please myself the way, if I saw the movie in a theater, I would be pleased. Do I think about catering to an audience? No. — Shane Black

For Scary Movie 2, we had a due date and had to work fast. And though there's a lot of pressure, as artists, we just block it out. So really, the pressure comes from us. That's how the first movie happened. There was no outside pressure: we wanted to hit the audience hard. — Shawn Wayans

I am so happy because I want more people to like martial arts movie not just martial arts audience. Even martial arts can be used in comedy, in drama, in horror movies, in different kinds of movies. — Jet Li

Look at all the drug busts all over the country. There must be an audience there somewhere. My feeling is that if we're losing the war on drugs, let's do a movie for the enemy. — Tommy Chong

I think the audience doesn't know a movie's lit, but they feel it. Because you've walked in a forest many times, or in a park, so you know how it looks. When you start lighting, subconsciously you know there is something that is absolutely wrong. — Emmanuel Lubezki

Animation is the one type of movie that really does play for the entire audience. Our challenge is to make stories that connect for kids and adults. — John Lasseter

I have no rules. For me, it's a full, full experience to make a movie. It takes a lot of time, and I want there to be a lot of stuff in it. You're looking for every shot in the movie to have resonance and want it to be something you can see a second time, and then I'd like it to be something you can see 10 years later, and it becomes a different movie, because you're a different person. So that means I want it to be deep, not in a pretentious way, but I guess I can say I am pretentious in that I pretend. I have aspirations that the movie should trigger off a lot of complex responses. — David Cronenberg

Television offers a range and scope, and a degree of creativity and daring, that the bottom-line, global-audience-obsessed, brand-driven movie industry just can't compete with. — Graydon Carter

I've never acted before in a movie I've directed. This felt like the time to do it just because the " Leaves of Grass" movie itself is so much of a platform for the lead actor. It's really written for an exciting performance and it really depends on the audience watching an extraordinary actor having a great time pulling off this feat. It makes sense to me as a director to act in support of that. — Edward Norton

The main thing is to do each project the way you want, and if they find an audience, that's terrific. And if they don't, there's nothing you can do anyway, so don't let it concern you that much. An awful lot of good movies have done badly and an awful lot of bad movies have done very well. There are no real rhymes or reasons for it. Sometimes the stars don't always align right. But if you've done the best you can, you feel pretty good about it. — Clint Eastwood

If the movie is quiet I generally feel the audience is busy. That's when they're working. — Ang Lee

I can pick up a screenplay and flip through the pages. If all I see is dialog, dialog, dialog, I won't even read it. I don't care how good the dialog is - it's a moving picture. It has to move all the time ... It's not the stage. A movie audience doesn't have the patience to sit and learn a lesson. Their eyes need to be dazzled. The writer is the most important element in the entire film because if it ain't on the page it ain't going to be on the screen. — Robert Evans

My [singing] style really has no style, because I try to sing each number differently. I've always believed that if style takes precedent over the words and music, the audience get's cheated. It's like when people see a fine play or movie. They imagine themselves in the leading role. I want them to imagine that they're singing - not just listening to someone else. — Judy Garland

One hopes that with a book or movie, the reader or the audience will emerge from it thinking. That's the most you can hope for: that you've raised questions that will be there for the audience to think about later. — Lois Lowry

There seems to be an assumption that if you're offended by movie brutality, you are somehow playing into the hands of the people who want censorship. But this would deny those of us who don't believe in censorship the use of the only counter-balance: the freedom of the press to say that there's anything conceivably damaging in these films - the freedom to analyze their implications ... How can people go on talking about the dazzling brilliance of movies and not notice that the directors are sucking up to the thugs in the audience? — Pauline Kael

Not every movie has to serve as every audience member's need for completion. — Todd Phillips

If the audience, in minute 50, is thinking about the way a movie is shot, there's a problem. I want it to permeate emotionally. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

At the end of the day, it is just a movie, and we should remember that we're doing it for the audience, and we should have fun doing it. If we have fun doing it, it will come across on the screen. — Luke Bracey

My personal success would be that people understand what I was trying to do. It was the most palatable when I watchmen_7_mdid Dawn. With Watchmen, too, I feel the same way. The movie's ironic and satirical and it's funny and serious and that's kind of the same way I felt about Dawn. Like I really was making a movie that knows it's a zombie movie and enjoys that and wants the audience to say, yeah, that's okay. — Zack Snyder

You know, what's popular? Okay, vampires are very popular. Let me make my vampire movie. I'm not saying you can't make a vampire movie. But if you're going to do one do something crazy. I mean don't just get a bunch of, like I said, models and make them into vampires so you'll get an audience. You know maybe get some ugly vampires for a change. — Billy Bob Thornton

I'm always nervous about it. You know, somehow, without even knowing it, I try and recreate the idea of what it feels like to go in front of an audience every night when I'm making a film. And that similar type of pressure and excitement before a scene, or preparing for a movie, so ... — Jake Gyllenhaal

We're all so jaded. We've seen so many movies. We know what's going to happen in every single movie. I mean, there are some movies where I'm like why do I even need to keep watching? And so, if you can make a movie in which you're completely surprising the audience left and right, and left and right, then you've won. If a jaded film critic or reporter or an audience is like, "I didn't see that one coming," that to me is like a victory. — Richard Shepard

When I watch a movie myself, I want to forget that I'm watching a movie, and I want to be inside the movie. That's the kind of experience I want my audience to have. — Susanne Bier

I don't worry so much about the audience. I want them very much to be involved and enjoy the movie, but I try to just inhabit the character in a full way, where I can create a personal stake. — Willem Dafoe

It's more interesting for me as an audience member to see a movie about a loser. — Ethan Coen

I love my camera crews on all my jobs. It's the half of the job that the audience never gets to see. They're integral. They're as much a part of making a movie or television show as I am. — Natalie Dormer

I want to grow up, live my life, experience things, make movies about those experiences and by the time the audience catches up, hopefully they'll have a movie there that helps them get through that next phase when the discover life isn't always like High School Musical. — Zac Efron

As a filmmaker, I wish we didn't have to do trailers at all, quite honestly. I wish we didn't have to do posters. I wish didn't have to give anything away. I wish people could just come in the movie blind. But as an audience member, I respect that you have to tell an audience that this is worth your time. — Drew Goddard

Some movies bring out the creativity in you. Every single audience member can become creative in the face of a particular movie. If you happen to like my films, it's because my films provide a bed for you on which you can find your creativity. The Hollywood movies do not provide that for you. — Abbas Kiarostami

You know that certain things that you use in the film are going to be shown to audiences five hundred times before they ever sit down to watch the movie. So you have to kind of modulate what can I do to give marketing enough material but that I can still withhold certain things so that it's fresh and surprising for the audience coming to see the movie. — Christopher McQuarrie

A cinematographer is a visual psychiatrist - moving an audience through a movie ... making them think the way you want them to think, painting pictures in the dark. — Gordon Willis

I've spent several years in Hollywood, and I still think the movie heroes are in the audience. — Wilson Mizner

The most stressful and difficult part of steering a large movie is that you are taking on the responsibility of communicating with a very wide audience. You can't ever hide behind the notion of, 'Okay, they just don't get it,' or, 'Certain people just don't get it.' You have to be mindful of the size of your audience, and you have to communicate in a way that lets them in. — Christopher Nolan

Why would everyone - in both the movie business and the audience - want to avoid the label "marriage"? Marriage was presumably everybody's business. People were either born into one, born outside of one, living in one, living outside of one, trying to woo someone into one, divorced from one, trying to get divorced from one, reading about one, dreaming about one, or just observing one from afar. For most people, it would be the central event - the biggest decision - of their lives. Marriage was the poor man's trip to Paris and the shopgirl's final goal. At the very least, it was a common touchstone. Unlike a fantasy film or a sci-fi adventure, a marriage story didn't have to be explained or defined. Unlike a western or a gangster plot, it didn't have to find a connection to bring a jolt of emotional recognition to an audience. Marriage was out there, free to be used and presented to people who knew what the deal was. — Jeanine Basinger

The movies have been so rank the last couple of years that when I see people lining up to buy tickets I sometimes think that the movies aren't drawing an audience - they're inheriting an audience. People just want to go to a movie. They're stung repeatedly, yet their desire for a good movie - for any movie - is so strong that all over the country they keep lining up. — Pauline Kael

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

You can't plan your character arc - you have a vague idea, maybe, but I'm constantly surprised. Sometimes actors in films will play the ending of the movie, or even the middle, and you know where it's going - as an audience member you can read the actor. — Evan Peters

I don't want to admit it, but I do enjoy the feedback from the audience. It's instant feedback. It's like, you could do a movie, shoot it for a year, wait six months, it comes out and you gotta do three weeks of marketing. Three weeks of that, and everyone goes, 'It sucks.' — Jimmy Fallon

If you are the record label who owns Lady Gaga, and you have a new artist coming up, you can say, 'Let's have the artist play just before Gaga.' Now you've exposed the huge Gaga audience to the new artist. It's similar to showing a trailer before a movie. The hit creates a hit. — Anita Elberse

You don't want a movie to have a lot of awards and no audience. — Andrew Lau

Comedy and horror are cousins; they're related. They both come from storytellers who want to specifically affect the audience and elicit specific reactions during the movie. — Jason Reitman

Don't let negative pictures play on the movie screen of your mind. You are the director and the audience. You are in charge. Take the remote control. Change the channel. If you let your imagination run wild, let it run wild in a positive direction. — Joel Osteen

You never really know until you put the movie in front of an audience. I am a big advocate of screenings, which are getting harder and harder to do nowadays. — Keenen Ivory Wayans

I think the biggest challenge was being aware of a certain audience that was going to see this film [lone survivor]. There's a big difference from a typical movie, journalists and critics and film goers that go see it find that, that's the general experience you have as a filmmaker. So that just kind of proves my point that there's a really different audience. — Peter Berg

There's something really special for a young person to sit in an audience and discover somebody, and it's rare to do because so much of a movie's economics are based on pre-existing actors or actresses. — Craig Brewer

It's not hard to understand why an accomplished director like Gus Van Sant (whose most recent success, Good Will Hunting , gave him mainstream clout) would be interested in making this film. The lure of an exact remake presents a tremendous challenge. Unfortunately, it was undoubtedly a lot more stimulating for Van Sant and his crew to make Psycho than it is for an audience to watch it. [C]uriosity is going to be one of the primary reasons why people pay money to see this movie; boredom will be the predominant result. — James Berardinelli

With female-oriented movies, unless it's something like 'Bridesmaids' or a romantic comedy, you've got to really worry about your opening weekend. And I'm always telling stories about women, not younger women, and it's just a much tougher audience to get to the movie theater. — Callie Khouri

We were in production on a movie called All the Real Girls, which filmed in the Fall of 2001, and we really discovered who Danny McBride was, as an actor. When I say we, I mean me and a crew and a small audience that would hit the art house. He'd never acted before, and it was a really refreshing, eye-opening experience to watch him unleash, in front of the camera, all this comedic potential that we knew he had, as a human being and as the guy doing keg-stands at the party. — David Gordon Green

My hope is that digital technology will level things out more and that it will eventually eliminate favoritism. But technology cannot do it alone. The audience has to become more discriminating as well and not buy into every big tentpole movie because they have been brainwashed into thinking that's the movie to see. — Lexi Alexander

I've never found kicks to the groin particularly funny, although recent work in the genre of the buddy movie suggests audience research must prove me wrong. — Roger Ebert

Apart from being interested in a good role, I think it's necessary to make up your mind as to whether it will make a movie that will entertain an audience all over the world and not just in your own backyard. — Rod Taylor

It's always more interesting to make a movie about what is relevant in your society. What's the political global backdrop? What are our threats? What are we vulnerable to? Because that's what an audience vibes on - that is what people are interested in, universally. — Gerard Butler

When I get a script, it's the only time that I get to be an audience member with the first-time experience of that movie. That's the first and only time. — Dennis Quaid

I learned a great lesson early on, even before I was really an actor, from that movie 'Planes, Trains & Automobiles' that John Hughes made: that you could make a movie that's really, really, really, really funny, and sometimes you can still achieve ... making the audience feel very deep emotions as well. — Joel Edgerton

I do a little improv in my shows. Kind of like our movie, I'll do beats and ideas of dialogue, but I think there's less pressure because it's a live show. If you mess up, the audience laughs because we don't really know what we're doing. But as far as shooting, that was very scary, trying to make a point and drive the film. It definitely helped improvising. — Charlyne Yi

Even though I'm an actor, even though I know a little bit about film, I very much view things as an audience member. For me, whether it's TV, film, theater, whatever, it's a big movie, a small movie, whatever it is, I look for the truth in it. I look for the honesty. I just look for if it feels honest and real to me. — Elisabeth Moss

For me, it [moviemaking] is about social relevance. I want to make a movie that has some type of relevance where as the audience can't help but relate it in some way, and to continue that conversation outside the theater. I want people saying "this happened to my father" or "this happened to me." That's what I want. — Ric Roman Waugh

I don't like losing the words, as you have to, when I'm asked to turn a play into a movie. It's not a matter of ego ... I'm just better able to create the character for an audience through words rather than through actions. — Neil Simon

The only time I have a good hunch the audience is going to be there is when I make the sequel to 'Jurassic Park' or I make another Indiana Jones movie. I know I've got a good shot at getting an audience on opening night. Everything else that is striking out into new territory is a crap shoot. — Steven Spielberg

In horror movies, you can write music that if it was performed on the concert stage would have the audience running out of the room with their fingers in their ears. But in a movie, all of a sudden it becomes incredibly accessible and appreciated. — Christopher Young

I think for us - the Weinstein name, the Miramax name - they've both become synonymous with brands. We have a real winning formula when it comes to championing a different kind of movie, and I think the audience trusts us. — Harvey Weinstein

Anything that's memorable about a movie is often what a test audience will object to because they're being asked to be experts. They just compare the film they finished watching to all of the other films that they've seen. — Andrew Dominik

I just saw the movie for the first time in its entirely last night. It's really cool when you're in with an audience that's so tuned in and plugged in to what's going on. — Sasha Alexander

Women became almost our bigger audience. Teenage girls went crazy for my movie. I saw it. I went to theatres all over and there were gangs of girls going and screaming. There were kids that were 10 or 11 years old when September 11 happened. They've been told for years they're going to get killed, they're going to get blown up. Every time you go on an airplane, X-ray your shoes because you're going to get blown up. Terror alert orange, don't travel. So, people have a reaction and they want to scream. Horror movies have become the new date movie. — Eli Roth

Surprises are good. I'm not of the thinking where you tell the audience everything. Sometimes I don't even want to see the trailers. You see the trailer, you've seen the movie. — Spike Lee

We kept a broad audience, and we didn't make fun of people who had necessarily made mistakes in their life and burned them to the ground. We made fun of a commercial or a movie or ourselves. — Tim Conway

When you see Robert Englund in a movie, you think he is the bad guy, but if I'm not the bad guy, and I'm supposed to just kind of fool the audience, it makes it a lot easier for whichever actor is the bad guy. So I find myself doing a lot of those, I think they're called red herring characters, faking out the audience. — Robert Englund

Do you know what makes a movie work? Moments. Give the audience half a dozen moments they can remember, and they'll leave the theatre happy. — Rosalind Russell

And that's another reason to make this movie: We can put plays on film now, at a relatively small cost, and they will reach an audience they would never have reached otherwise. — Dustin Hoffman

Showing your movie to an audience ... it's like your kid doing a piano recital. 'Just let it not fail. Please.' — Rian Johnson

When you making a piece of comedy entertainment, the audience is a big component there. You do have to end up getting rid of things that you love, but in the interest of making a movie that's not longer than two hours, and in the interest of when every joke hopefully is good enough, then everybody looks good. You cut things that you love, but ultimately it's for the greater good of making the whole movie better. — Jason H. Moore

I used to throw up before I went on stage, every time. Even though it's only 200 people in the audience, and a movie like RoboCop is going to be seen by many, many people, I know I'd be much more nervous doing a play than being on set shooting. — Joel Kinnaman

I thought 'The Artist' was a perfect way to find a good balance. The artistic challenge is obvious because the film is black-and-white and its silent, but I did my best to make the movie accessible and easy to watch. I really don't want to make elitist movies. I really try hard to work for the audience. Audiences are smart. They get everything. — Michel Hazanavicius

Movie-making is serious business. The director and the crew are already under a lot of pressure to give their best to the audience. Therefore, the best part for me as an actor is to act well in the movies and make a jolly atmosphere with the co-stars on the sets. — Abhishek Bachchan

Usually the audience has no idea that the censored version of whatever movie they're watching isn't the original. — Todd Solondz

When I first envisioned 'Funny Games' in the mid-1990s, it was my intention to have an American audience watch the movie. It is a reaction to a certain American cinema, its violence, its naivety, the way American cinema toys with human beings. In many American films, violence is made consumable. — Michael Haneke

I like making stories and characters that people can relate to. I also like giving the audience a departure from whatever they're thinking about in their life and enjoying a show or a movie. — Haylie Duff

The greatest movie would be the movie that gave the audience a cathartic feeling of transcendence. — Nick Nolte

I'd love to do another 'Indiana Jones.' A character that has a history and a potential, kind of a rollicking good movie ride for the audience, Steven Spielberg as a director - what's not to like? — Harrison Ford

I don't think a movie today that captured all the things that we did in the seventies could come close, because it's like asking to recreate the seventies and the audience sensibilities and that's impossible. — Paul Michael Glaser