Movie Picture Quotes & Sayings

Basically, you make another movie, and another, and hopefully you feel good about every picture you make. And you say, 'My name is on that. I did that. It's OK.' But don't get me wrong, I still get excited by it all. That, I hope, will never disappear. — Martin Scorsese

I mean to tell you, the Law's notion of justice is more cold-blooded than any outlaw I ever knew. And I mean 'outlaw,' not criminal. 'Criminal' doesn't distinguish between guys like men and the guys who own the banks and insurance companies and stock markets, who own the factories and coal mines and oil fields, who own the goddamn Law. I once said to John that being an outlaw was about the only way left for a man to hold on to his self-respect, and he said Ain't that the sad truth. The girls laughed along with us because they knew it wasn't a joke ... John got the publicity because he loved it ... he carried on like the whole thing was an adventure movie and he was Douglas Fairbanks. He wanted to to be a 'star.' That's how he was. Not me. I never even liked having my picture taken. All I ever wanted was to show the bastards who own the law that it didn't mean they owned me. — James Carlos Blake

The movie is actually from a book by Stephen King called The Body. When they were gonna put it to a motion picture, they found the story was a bit too strong for the title The Body, based on a young kid's movie. It would be too heavy. — Ben E. King

When I shoot actors, I have that dilemma. I want the actor to be good, and sometimes I have to push them to a place that isn't pleasant. I always think: 'Is it worth doing for the sake of the movie?' But I have to remember the bigger picture. — Michel Gondry

I think in every picture that I've ever made. Everything that I've done torments me. I really would like another chance except I'd be too embarrassed to ever really try to do them again and no one would want to see the same movie just done differently. — Sam Raimi

The motion picture is the people's Art. — Adela Rogers St. Johns

thought about it and concluded that I would go ahead with the venture since Shapoorji was confident about the movie's success. The more I worked on the basic conflict in the script between the brother who has to uphold the law of the country and the brother who flees from the law, which favours the rich and the powerful and unjustly incriminates the poor and the defenceless, the more I felt it was time for me to make a picture that raised some critical issues about the people of rural India who had gained little from the country's independence from foreign rule. The oppressed farmers and tillers — Dilip Kumar

Everybody can take a good picture. Everybody is interesting. Everyone has an interesting face. Some people are more difficult or more nervous or more tired. When you do a movie, you have action, you're talking, you're moving. You don't see the camera. Taking a picture with a photographer, you don't talk, it's more difficult than in a movie for your body to relax, to be yourself. — Keira Knightley

But fundamentally, I don't think of it as an alien-invasion movie; everybody's here, kind of, right? So, I think it's probably more of an action-adventure picture, if I actually had to qualify it. — Lorenzo Di Bonaventura

The job is trying to create movie shots that have depth, that have the meanings you need them to have, and then good enough so that they will add something to the final picture. They will make the picture; they'll get into the picture, and give them what they need. It's an interesting job. — Robert Forster

I didn't picture myself as a movie actress. I began to think about it around college. I remember thinking, 'Well somebody has to be in them,' so maybe I could do that eventually. It's all been a surprise. — Annette Bening

When I see those ads with the quote 'You'll have to see this picture twice,' I know it's the kind of picture I don't want to see once. — Pauline Kael

My travels have always been of the same kind. No matter where I've gone or why I've gone there it ends up that I never see anything. Becoming a movie star is living on a merry-go-round. When you travel you take the merry-go-round with you. You don't see natives or new scenery. You see chiefly the same press agents, the same sort of interviewers, and the same picture layouts of yourself. — Marilyn Monroe

Looking back at Batman from a distance after all the hype has dried up and the franchise has at least temporarily been abandoned it's easy to see the movie for what it is: a moderately diverting motion picture that should have been shorter and better paced. There are a lot of things wrong with Batman , but it still makes for decent entertainment in the fine tradition of the typical low-intelligence summer movie. The best thing that can be said about Batman is that it led to Batman Returns , which was a far superior effort. — James Berardinelli

It's rare, he says, that we "encounter a person who asserts vehemently that the mere thought of reading a novel, or looking at a picture, or seeing a movie causes him insufferable torment," but "sensible, educated people" often say "with a remarkable blend of defiance and pride" that math is "pure torture" or a "nightmare" that "turns them off. — Edward Frenkel

I love writing every song I can like a little mini movie. I like to have a character, or some characters, and really paint a picture with the song. — Dolly Parton

I'm in the middle of just trying to impress my nieces, who think I work for the bus company because they saw a picture of me on a bus. I did an independent movie with Mark Pellington (I Melt with You), and then tried to impress my nieces again, by starring opposite Miley Cyrus (in So Undercover). So, basically I'm just trying to get some respect from my family. — Jeremy Piven

People often mistake technology for a static picture. It's less like a picture and more like a movie. It's the velocity of technology innovation that matters. It's the acceleration. — Elon Musk

A movie like House of the Dead with around $7 million budget or Alone in the Dark with around $16 million budget are much easier to make profit than the typical $50 million major motion picture. — Uwe Boll

Short of climbing aboard a time capsule and peeling back eight and one-half decades, James Cameron's magnificent Titanic is the closest any of us will get to walking the decks of the doomed ocean liner. Meticulous in detail, yet vast in scope and intent, Titanic is the kind of epic motion picture event that has become a rarity. You don't just watch Titanic , you experience it from the launch to the sinking, then on a journey two and one-half miles below the surface, into the cold, watery grave where Cameron has shot never-before seen documentary footage specifically for this movie. — James Berardinelli

The world that you see is like a motion picture. We are engrossed in a film and we have forgotten that we're sitting in a movie theatre. — Frederick Lenz

Next time I go to a movie and see a picture of a little ordinary girl become a great star ... I'll believe it. And whenever I hear my wife read fairy tales to my little boy, I'll listen. I know now that dreams do come true. — Jackie Robinson

I will never become a director or a movie producer. I was always looking at picture directing because I didn't know what to do! You can't be a movie director without real preparation. — Liam Neeson

It always gives me a comfort, watching the TV late at night, thinking about all the other people around Ohio watching the same old movie, maybe even thinking the same old thoughts. I picture them curled up on their couches in their living rooms, and all the lonely little sounds of the night drifting in through their window screens. — Donald Ray Pollock

Very effective way to do this with a bunch of second graders, is take a picture of The Lion King for instance, and a teacher might say, 'Do you know that the music for this movie was written by a gay man?' The message is: I'm better at what I do, because I'm gay. — Michele Bachmann

I like to think of myself as the Chris Benoit of the movie industry, capable of taking any picture and carrying it to box-office success. Take Garden State, without me that would have just been two hours of Portman doging. — Zach Braff

In Paris, when the picture came out [Casablanca] they weren't too pleased with it. They didn't like the political point of view. The picture was taken off immediately and was never sold to television. A while ago it was brought in and opened in five theatres in Paris, as a new movie. They had a big gala opening where I appeared and people were absolutely crazy about it. — Ingrid Bergman

A movie and a stage show are two entirely different things. A picture, you can do anything you want. Change it, cut out a scene, put in a scene, take a scene out. They don't do that on stage. — Cab Calloway

I've done a Russian movie," Claire said. "Thank God they're still stuck in realism, Zola-crazy. Subtitling their films is like captioning a child's picture book. — Paula Fox

The geniuses who conduct the motion-picture business killed glamour when they decided that what the public wanted was not dream stuff, from which movies used to be made, but realism. — Hedda Hopper

The world comes second hand - fifth hand - to us and the illusion that it is fresh because it is shown as a picture of an actual place or is given as a 'true account' by some reporter who claims to have been 'there' divides man into incalculable parts without any true center. — Josephine Herbst

From what I hear, everyone who does a Marvel movie gets a three-picture deal. I'll be Sam Jackson's stand-in. I'll do eight pictures for Marvel, and then I'll just do indies. Marvel can pay for my indie career. — Sinqua Walls

If you don't know my name and you don't know what movie I'm from, don't come ask for a picture while I'm trying to eat chipotle — Ansel Elgort

I've always wanted to appear in a 3-D Movie, that's always been a goal of mine. If you appear in a 3-D picture you are a shoo-in for an Oscar. There's no competition. — Nikki Cox

Character actors just pile up the credits because you work on a movie for, like, a few days. It's not like I'm the lead in everything I do - far from it. I'm not spending three or four months on a picture; I'm spending three or four weeks. Sometimes three or four days. — Steve Buscemi

I feel the horror audience is a great audience, and I would ideally make a movie that would give them as much energy as they're willing to give to the picture. — Sam Raimi

[Director Christopher] Nolan has not only crafted the best Batman movie, but arguably the second-best motion picture superhero narrative (topped only by the linked duo of Superman and Superman II ). For those who thought Spider-Man and X-Men had a lot to offer, wait till you see where this film goes ... Batman Begins is a strong re-start to a franchise that deserves better than it has often been accorded. — James Berardinelli

The result is a picture that represents so much of what I want and rarely get from a movie - a couple of hours filled with characters who are as exciting as the people I know in real life. — Gene Siskel

A movie is a certain thing by definition. There's nothing wrong with knocking out a good genre picture. — David Ayer

A tall, fragile woman with pale blond hair and a face of such beauty that it seemed veiled by distance, as if the artist had been merely able to suggest it, not to make it quite real ... she was Kay Ludlow, the movie star who, once seen, could never be forgotten; the star who had retired and vanished five years ago, to be replaced by girls of indistinguishable names and interchangeable faces ... she felt that the glass cafeteria was a cleaner use for Kay Ludlow's beauty than a role in a picture glorifying the commonplace for possessing no glory. — Ayn Rand

When a picture can't make it on its own, the producers pull in a 'controversial' message - the way a couple whose marriage is falling apart decide to have a baby. — Pauline Kael

The only power source a book needs is you. If you have to leave for a few minutes you have not lost the story. It is waiting for you when you return. You can pick up a book and resume reading at any time, after a few minutes, a few days, even a few years. A television picture or a movie might be lost forever, but your book is waiting. — Louis L'Amour

Its not really about the movie business, it's about staying in the picture. — Robert Evans

Michael made his debut in John Carpenter's 1978 horror classic, Halloween , possibly the best scare movie to come along in the last twenty-five years ... [W]ith the release of the sixth (and hopefully final) movie to bear the Halloween moniker, we see how far the mighty have fallen ... In the final analysis, The Curse of Michael Myers is a horrific motion picture just not in the way the film makers intended - Directed By Joe Chappelle. — James Berardinelli

I was desperately unhappy with it [Blade Runner]. I was compelled by contract to record five or six different versions of the narration, each of which was found wanting on a storytelling basis. The final version was something that I was completely unhappy with. The movie obviously has a very strong following, but it could have been more than a cult picture. — Harrison Ford

In the theater the audience is generally riveted to a single angle of observation. The movie director, though, can rapidly shift from objective to subjective
and to any number of subjective points of view
and in so doing seem to pull the audience directly inside the frame of his picture, giving the spectator the sense of experiencing an action from the viewpoint of a participant. Identification of the viewer with the film character, then, can be much more intimate than the analogous situation in the theater. — Ed Murray

With so much sky and so much river, you couldn't help seeing the big picture. It was what you already knew, but crowding into the subway or rushing to a movie, you only saw it for a second, and close up. Now I took a good long look. I'd always heard you couldn't see stars in Manhattan because of all the lights. But here they all were. Here was my night in shining armor. — Melissa Bank

My first and lasting impression of the Connecticut River Valley is its serene beauty, especially in the autumn months. Deep River was a near picture-perfect New England village. When I arrived there, the town was a typical working-class place, nothing like the trendy upper-income enclave it became. The town center had a cluster of shops, a movie theater open only on weekends, several white-steepled churches (none of them Catholic), the town hall, and a Victorian library. It was small, even by Ansonia standards. — John William Tuohy

It is not as mirrors reflect us but, rather, as our dreams do, that movies most truly reveal the times. If the dreams we have been dreaming provide a sad picture of us, it should be remembered that - like that first book of Dante's Comedy - they show forth only one region of the psyche. Through them we can read with a peculiar accuracy the fears and confusions that assail us - we can read, in caricature, the Hell in which we are bound. But we cannot read the best hopes of the time. — Barbara Deming

My mother used to paper pictures from movie magazines on the wall of her bedroom. When I was born, she looked at those pictures to decide on a name for me. Claudette Colbert's picture was up there and so was Loretta Young's. She decided Loretta was the prettiest name, so I was named after her. — Loretta Lynn

Film analysis enables us to recognize how the filmmakers have their magic on us, how all the constituent elements of the film have combined to create that magic. Rather than rob us of the pleasures of watching films, this approach affords us the even greater pleasure of deep engagement — Jon Lewis

Pasquale considered his friend's face. It had such an open quality, was such a clearly American face, like Dee's face, like Michael Deane's face. He believed he could spot an American anywhere by that quality - that openness, that stubborn belief in possibility, a quality that, in his estimation, even the youngest Italians lacked. Perhaps it was the difference in age between the countries - America with its expansive youth, building all those drive-in movie theaters and cowboy restaurants; Italians living in endless contraction, in the artifacts of generations, in the bones of empires. This reminded him of Alvis Bender's contention that stories were like nations - Italy a great epic poem, Britain a thick novel, America a brash motion picture in Technicolor - and he remembered, too, Dee Moray saying she'd spent years "waiting for her movie to start," and that she'd almost missed out on her life waiting for it. — Jess Walter

Who would have thought that [director] Cameron Crowe had a movie as bad as Vanilla Sky in him? It's a punishing picture, a betrayal of everything that Crowe has proved he knows how to do right. — Stephanie Zacharek

As soon as people see my face on a movie screen, they knew two things: first, I'm not going to get the girl, and second, I'll get a cheap funeral before the picture is over. — Lee Marvin

The motion picture is like journalism in that, more than any of the other arts, it confers celebrity. Not just on people - on acts, and objects, and places, and ways of life. The camera brings a kind of stardom to them all. I therefore doubt that film can ever argue effectively against its own material: that a genuine antiwar film, say, can be made on the basis of even the ugliest battle scenes ... No matter what filmmakers intend, film always argues yes. — Renata Adler

The reality is that every movie is a new business. Nobody says, 'Hey, let's go down to the Pantages Theater, I hear a Warner Brothers picture is playing there.' Or, 'Let's go to this theater, I hear the film came in on budget.' It'd be ridiculous. — Peter Guber

My scripts are always filled with notes. I like to just analyze everything from the point of view of the whole picture, of the movie, my whole picture. — Geena Davis

We love to entertain audiences and this picture does that - it's romantic, it's funny, it's got a nice message and I think it's a gift to the audience to be able to enjoy this movie. — Jerry Bruckheimer

There's an audience out there for all these different types of things. Whether it's comedy, motion-picture drama, family movie or a cool, cutting-edge indie, it's nice to know that I can span all those different genres. — Ralph Macchio

Still, these days when I daydream about the movie, I don't think about the big picture. It's more fun for me to think of little things that would add to the movie. I like to think the powers that be would let me amuse myself with some small things in order to shut me up while they re-write the screenplay to turn Kvothe into a lesbian, shape-changing unicorn.
— Patrick Rothfuss

The Academy Awards ceremony is designed to be without irony, but Chris Rock supplied it anyway with filmed movie-theater interviews with black men and women who had never heard of the movies nominated for Best Picture. — Suzanne Fields

Life is like a B-picture script. It is that corny. If I had my life story offered to me to film, I'd turn it down. — Kirk Douglas

How do you separate fantasy from reality? How can you be sure the story of your life both from long ago and minute to minute is true? There is a pleasant vindication to be found when you accept that you can't. No one can, yet we persist and thrive. Who you think you are is sort of like a movie based on true events, which is not necessarily a bad thing. The details may be embellished, but the big picture, the general idea, is probably a good story worth hearing about. — David McRaney

Everyone is so preoccupied by youth. People talk about how the movie business is a microcosm of the bigger picture, or life imitating art, but the business is guilty for getting women out of the way. — Sam Elliott

Every Pixar movie at one time was the worst motion picture ever made. — John Lasseter

Life is like a motion picture, everything is like a movie. In one of my rhymes I say, "My life is like a movie/Directed by King Louie". — King Louie

Often a performance can be judged not by a movie's strongest moment but by its weakest, especially when it's the picture's crucial scene. — Steve Erickson

Producers say things that they would like to see in the movie but they don't see the full picture. In the end if you ignore everything the producers say, of course, you get fired; but then if you listen to a producer on everything then it's like 'Hey - why don't you direct your own movie?' — Ryuhei Kitamura

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

The Trust movie it has shown how one picture could be twisted and even how the cops are dirty! — Deyth Banger

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

I talked with Tom Hanks. I saw that movie 'Turner and Hooch' at least 50 times. It took all my guts to go up to him. I went up to him, I was like, 'Can I have a picture?' We talked acting; he wanted to know what I was doing. We talked a little tennis. I mean, he knew all about myself and my sister. — Serena Williams

Frank called me one day and said, 'I have an idea for a movie, why don't you come over and I'll tell you?' So I went over and we sat down and he said, 'This picture starts in heaven'. That shook me. — James Stewart

'Birdman' is basically 'All About Eve' - the 1950 comedy about rehearsal rivalries in a Broadway show, and another Best Picture laureate - reimagined as a Batman suicide mission. The movie couldn't be actor-ier. — Richard Corliss

The human brain runs first-class simulation software. Our eyes don't present to our brains a faithful photograph of what is out there, or an accurate movie of what is going on through time. Our brains construct a continuously updated model: updated by coded pulses chattering along the optic nerve, but constructed nevertheless. Optical illusions are vivid reminders of this.47 A major class of illusions, of which the Necker Cube is an example, arise because the sense data that the brain receives are compatible with two alternative models of reality. The brain, having no basis for choosing between them, alternates, and we experience a series of flips from one internal model to the other. The picture we are looking at appears, almost literally, to flip over and become something else. — Richard Dawkins

In my view, the only way to see a film remains the way the filmmaker intended: inside a large movie theater with great sound and pristine picture. — Ridley Scott

Create a Chocolate Factory There may be as many different types of playrooms as there are families, but every one of them should have the following design element: lots of choices. A place for drawing. A place for painting. Musical instruments. A wardrobe hanging with costumes. Blocks. Picture books. Tubes and gears. Anything where a child can be safely let loose, joyously free to explore whatever catches her fancy. Did you see the movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory? If so, you may have been filled with wonder at the chocolate plant, complete with trees, lawns, and waterfalls - a totally explorable, nonlinear ecology. That's what I mean. I am focusing on artistic pursuits because kids who are trained in the arts — John Medina

Biggie was a lyrical genius: he was a musical painter with words. As he rapped, you would see the picture come to life as you heard his story. You hear a lot of rappers rap; you hear a lot of singers sing, but you don't see the movie in your head the way you do when you hear Biggie rap. — R. Kelly

It's the character identification people remember, it's not so much remembering the movie; they just know that I'm a badass. I was a badass in Chicago before the movies ever came out. I was a badass on the football field - that's why they call me "the Hammer." I don't lean back on one particular picture, because I've done so many of them. But they all have the same common thing: I'm a badass. — Fred Williamson

When I do a film, the days before or the night before, I throw up. Sometimes it's just in my mouth and I swallow it back, but sometimes it's real. Whatever it is, it's hard. I don't do the first five or ten minutes of my character's appearance in a movie until the middle of the shooting schedule because I don't want him to be defined by my nervousness. So, we do the middle of the picture first. — Donald Sutherland

The model today is that as much as 70 percent of the financing of the picture would come from overseas. Now we're beginning to run out of suckers, because there are not that many people overseas who are willing to put up more than half the money for a movie. — Peter Bart

The reason they don't make movies for adults and for people which are the largest bulge of the population is because they are not usually going to the movie the first weekend. They take a while to learn about it, probably word of mouth. It takes a lot of money to release a picture. — Rob Reiner

I never set out to make a movie that was everything to everybody; if that were the case, we could all just take a picture of a tree and agree that the tree is beautiful and move on with our lives. I wouldn't even need to show up. — Shane Carruth

The riot isn't seen in the movie, but it is alluded to. He has this one speech that gives a great sense of texture and paints a picture of what was happening in Harlem then. — Debbie Allen

In Moulin Rouge, Baz Luhrmann takes the most thrilling moments in a movie musical-the seconds before the actors are about to burst into song and dance, when every breath they take is heightened-and makes an entire picture of such pinnacles. — Elvis Mitchell

The whole movie thing has never been a source of great pride for me, in that Burt Reynolds, who starred in the picture, butchered the original script I had written for the late Steve McQueen, and the result, while a massive moneymaker, was lashed by the critics. But like the old joke about Pierre the Bridge Builder, The Cannonball Run is indelibly inscribed on my so-called career portfolio, and few conversations with strangers pass without the subject of the picture arising. — Brock Yates

Each wedding picture was less of a memento than a scar. Proof of some horror movie scenario Katherine Kenton has survived. — Chuck Palahniuk

Just because you're big doesn't mean you're going to be successful. The beauty of the motion picture business is that you can make a little movie like 'Driving Miss Daisy' or 'Rain Man' and go right through the roof. This business is still about creative juices, and size is no guarantee of that. — Lee Rich

She looks at the Dictaphone in my hand.
"Are you recording this?"
"No, Alex, I was summarizing a deposition."
"How can you work?"
"How can you see a movie? How can you have a friend over?"
She looks away. Half of the room is bright from my lamp. The other side is dark, the sharp silhouette of the mountain framed by the window running across the room. The image always reminds me of a panoramic picture. — Kaui Hart Hemmings

The entire universe is God's cosmic motion picture, and that individuals are merely actors in the divine play who change roles through reincarnation; mankind's deep suffering is rooted in identifying too closely with one's current role, rather than with the movie's director, or God. — Paramahansa Yogananda

I spent a long time in art school so I can really draw. I'll doodle and suddenly I'll find the beginning of the movie in one picture. Usually, I start my stuff on the telephone. Right by the telephone I've got a book of doodles. When I'm on the phone, I'll be doing a drawing eventually. — Leonardo DiCaprio

But see, that's the thing about movies. Nothing is left to the imagination. You read a book, and you see a picture of the characters and the scenes in your mind. You don't have that with a movie. It's all either up there on the screen laid out for you, or it isn't there at all. — Laurie Viera Rigler

I think of each movie as a puzzle. The fun is in solving the puzzle: finding a musical identity for the picture, however that can be summed up. — Marco Beltrami

I know a lot of actors picture themselves winning Academy Awards. I really just wanted to do a Christmas movie because it's the kind of movie that I really love to watch. I'm a sucker for the holidays. — Leigh-Allyn Baker

He asked me whether I had seen the movie 'The Color Purple.' I said no she hadn't. And Bobby said, 'Well, it's a terrible picture. They don't make good, decent, moral pictures nowadays.' — Tommy Bond

You ever watch a football game and get totally into it? Why? It's not a real battle. It's just a game somebody made up. So how can you take it seriously? Or, you ever see a movie that made your heart about jump out of your chest? Or one that made you cry? Why? It wasn't real. You ever look at a photo of food that made your mouth water? Why? You can't eat the picture.
...
Same thing with water towers and God. I don't have to be a believer to be serious about my religion. — Pete Hautman