Steven Spielberg Quotes
film director
I love editing. It's one of my favorite parts about filmmaking.
I dream for a living.
There is a fine line between censorship and good taste and moral responsibility.
The public has an appetite for anything about imagination - anything that is as far away from reality as is creatively possible.
Why pay a dollar for a bookmark? Why not use the dollar for a bookmark?
The delicate balance of mentoring someone is not creating them in your own image, but giving them the opportunity to create themselves.
People have forgotten how to tell a story. Stories don't have a middle or an end any more. They usually have a beginning that never stops beginning.
Every time I go to a movie, it's magic, no matter what the movie's about.
Technology can be our best friend, and technology can also be the biggest party pooper of our lives. It interrupts our own story, interrupts our ability to have a thought or a daydream, to imagine something wonderful, because we're too busy bridging the walk from the cafeteria back to the office on the cell phone.
I think the key divide between the interactive media and the narrative media is the difficulty in opening up an empathic pathway between the gamer and the character, as differentiated from the audience and the characters in a movie or a television show.
I have never before, in my long and eclectic career, been gifted with such an abundance of natural beauty as I experienced filming 'War Horse' on Dartmoor.
As a Jew I am aware of how important the existence of Israel is for the survival of us all. And because I am proud of being Jewish, I am worried by the growing anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism in the world.
You can't intellectually purge yourself of who you are. Whatever that is, it's going to come out in the wash, the film wash. What you are is going to be relevant, if not to yourself, to the movies you make.
You shouldn't dream your film, you should make it!
When I was a kid, there was no collaboration; it's you with a camera bossing your friends around. But as an adult, filmmaking is all about appreciating the talents of the people you surround yourself with and knowing you could never have made any of these films by yourself.
I never felt comfortable with myself, because I was never part of the majority. I always felt awkward and shy and on the outside of the momentum of my friends' lives.
When I grow up, I still want to be a director.
All of us every single year, we're a different person. I don't think we're the same person all our lives.
You have many years ahead of you to create the dreams that we can't even imagine dreaming. You have done more for the collective unconscious of this planet than you will ever know.
Whether in success or in failure, I'm proud of every single movie I've ever directed.
I've discovered I've got this preoccupation with ordinary people pursued by large forces.
I wanted to do another movie that could make us laugh and cry and feel good about the world. I wanted to do something else that could make us smile. This is a time when we need to smile more and Hollywood movies are supposed to do that for people in difficult times.
I made 'Saving Private Ryan' for my father. He's the one who filled my head with war stories when I was growing up.
I'm not really interested in making money.
I don't drink coffee. I've never had a cup of coffee in my entire life. That's something you probably don't know about me. I've hated the taste since I was a kid.
I think documentaries are the greatest way to educate an entire generation that doesn't often look back to learn anything about the history that provided a safe haven for so many of us today.
When I felt like an outsider, movies made me feel inside my own skill set.
My head's not in the clouds, but I think I've gotten too much credit for being an astute businessman.
I have a choice - I can either watch all the dailies, or I can follow the social media. I can't do both.
Remember, science fiction's always been the kind of first level alert to think about things to come. It's easier for an audience to take warnings from sci-fi without feeling that we're preaching to them. Every science fiction movie I have ever seen, any one that's worth its weight in celluloid, warns us about things that ultimately come true.
From the day I started to think politically and to develop my own moral values, from my earliest youth, I have been an ardent defender of Israel.
I love creating partnerships; I love not having to bear the entire burden of the creative storytelling, and when I have unions like with George Lucas and Peter Jackson, it's really great; not only do I benefit, but the project is better for it.
Well, luckily with animation, fantasy is your friend.
The most amazing thing for me is that every single person who sees a movie, not necessarily one of my movies, brings a whole set of unique experiences. Now, through careful manipulation and good storytelling, you can get everybody to clap at the same time, to hopefully laugh at the same time, and to be afraid at the same time.
I dream for a living. Once a month the sky falls on my head, I come to, and I see another movie I want to make.
I simply adore 'The Simpsons.' I go to bed in a 'Simpsons' T-shirt.
Once a month the sky falls on my head, I come to and I see another movie I want to make.
Casting sometimes is fate and destiny more than skill and talent, from a director's point of view.
I go out and look for a good story to tell and if I like it enough and I decide to direct it, I become dangerously involved in becoming a part of that story.
I like the smell of film. I just like knowing there's film going through the camera.
I once said that CGI makes you less inventive. At the time I was bemoaning the loss of the practical stunt. If a stunt can be done practically and safely, I'd rather do it old-style.
Social media has taken over in America to such an extreme that to get my own kids to look back a week in their history is a miracle, let alone 100 years.
'E.T.' began with me trying to write a story about my parents' divorce.
There is something about killing people at close range that is excruciating. It's bound to try a man's soul.
I don't think any movie or any book or any work of art can solve the stalemate in the Middle East today. But it's certainly worth a try.
My problem is that my imagination won't turn off. I wake up so excited I can't eat breakfast. I've never run out of energy. It's not like OPEC oil; I don't worry about a premium going on my energy. It's just always been there. I got it from my mom.
I just had a crazy, wild imagination all my life, and science fiction is the greatest outlet for me.
The only thing that gets me back to directing is good scripts.
If I weren't a director, I would want to be a film composer.
My father had many, many veterans over to the house, and the older I got the more I appreciated their sacrifice.
I interviewed survivors, I went to Poland, saw the cities and spent time with the people and spoke to the Jews who had come back to Poland after the war and talked about why they had come back.
We all feel that if we have a crazy idea that might get laughed at, there's nothing wrong with seeing if there's a crazy writer out there who agrees with us and can take it to a crazy network and somehow bring something that's a little bit daft and edgy to life.
I don't think that anybody in any war thinks of themselves as a hero. The minute anybody presumes that they are heroes, they get their boots taken away from them and buried in the sand.
Audience members are only concerned about the story, the concept, the bells and whistles and the noise that a popular film starts to make even before it's popular. So audiences will not be drawn to the technology; they'll be drawn to the story. And I hope it always remains that way.
There were so many odd, strange things about Abraham Lincoln that I think nobody knew how to pigeonhole him.
It all starts with the script: it's not worth taking myself away from my family if I don't have something I'm really passionate about.
The baby boomers owe a big debt of gratitude to the parents and grandparents - who we haven't given enough credit to anyway - for giving us another generation.
Before statehood was achieved, Syria and Egypt had their tanks and military equipment lined up to invade Tel Aviv and destroy it; but the Israelis scrambled together an air force, some of it from old Second World War Messerschmidts, and the invasion was halted.
One of my daughters is a competitive jumper, we live with horses, we have stables on our property. But I don't ride. I observe, and I worry.
I'd rather direct than produce. Any day. And twice on Sunday.
Lincoln believed in the American people.
Because of how much movies cost, it's dangerous to be experimental on one film after the other. But we can experiment with television. We can do things that are fringe and bring ideas to the table that are offbeat and original.
I thought film was more important than life itself for many years. But I was naive to the world until my first child was born in 1985.
Naturally, it is a terrible, despicable crime when, as in Munich, people are taken hostage, people are killed. But probing the motives of those responsible and showing that they are also individuals with families and have their own story does not excuse what they did.
I am an American Jew and aware of the sensitivities involved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
If Bush, as I believe, has reliable information on the fact that Saddam Hussein is making weapons of mass destruction, I cannot not support the policies of his government.
A lot of the films I've made probably could have worked just as well 50 years ago, and that's just because I have a lot of old-fashion values.
There's no better way to test a person than to put them in the middle of a war. That's clearly going to show what kind of a character you're telling a story about.
For the most part, everybody who fights in war fights to survive.
I've always been interested in how we survive and how resourceful we are as Americans.
I made 'Empire of the Sun' in Shanghai in the 1980s and want to come back one day to make a movie in China.
Cell phones tend to bring us more inside of our lives whereas movies offer a chance to escape, so there are two competing forces.
The Japanese had a very strong belief in Bushido, death before dishonour. They were fighting for their country; they were the aggressors in World War II.
Like, I took no poetic license with 'Schindler's List' because that was historical, factual documents.
I love to go to a regular movie theater, especially when the movie is a big crowd-pleaser. It's much better watching a movie with 500 people making noise than with just a dozen.
Documentaries are the first line of education, and the second line of education is dramatization, such as 'The Pacific'.
'The Color Purple' is the kind of character piece that a director like Sidney Lumet could do brilliantly with one hand tied behind his back.
You can't start a movie by having the attitude that the script is finished, because if you think the script is finished, your movie is finished before the first day of shooting.
I think in terms of chapters. Every time I finish a movie, it's a chapter. When one of my kids graduates from school, that's a chapter.
There are so many rumours about so many of us in the public eye. Sometimes it's too hard to deny what is not true.
In '83, not only was there no such thing as performance motion capture technology, there was no such thing as digital animation. This was the analog era.
For one thing, I don't think that anybody in any war thinks of themselves as a hero.
I love history, so I do a lot of movies about history.
I missed my dad a lot growing up, even though we were together as a family. My dad was really a workaholic. And he was always working.
Fathering is a major job, but I need both things in my life: my job to be a director, and my kids to direct me.
I quit college so fast I didn't even clean out my locker.
I turned down 'Harry Potter' and 'Spider-Man,' two movies that I knew would be phenomenally successful, because I had already made movies like that before and they offered no challenge to me. I don't need my ego to be reminded.
When I was younger, all I cared about was what people thought of me and my films. Now I care less about catering, hand-serving, hand-feeding the audience. I've gotten to the point now in my life where I'm serving myself.
You know, I don't really do that much looking inside me when I'm working on a project. Whatever I am becomes what that film is. But I change; you change.
All presidents swear an oath to the Constitution to keep this country united, and when the country fell apart, Lincoln had to put it back together again, with a lot of help. But he bore total responsibility.
I believe in 3D for certain kinds of films. I certainly believe in using 3D for all things in animation because animation has such clarity and so much depth of focus. It worked great with 'Avatar' because 70 percent of that film is animated.
The Internet has been this miraculous conduit to the undeniable truth to the Holocaust.
I had a great time creating the future on 'Minority Report,' and it's a future that is coming true faster than any of us thought it would.
It's still a mystery to me, but even though my mother was like an older sister to me, I kind of put her up on a pedestal.
When my children were born, I made the choice I wanted them to be raised as Jews and to have a Jewish education.
I even get inspired by movies that aren't very good, because there's always something good in movies that are collectively thought of as a failure. There's good in everything, I find.
People often tell me how much they love the digital skies that we obviously painted for 'War Horse.' Well, there's not a single sky that we put in through special effects. The skies you see in the movie are the skies that we experienced - but it was definitely challenging at times.
It is not my job to compare my movies. I don't like to compare my films with other movies because I don't really have that perspective. It is an intellectual exercise, but it doesn't intuitively come to me.
Bloated budgets are ruining Hollywood - these pictures are squeezing all the other types of movies out of Hollywood. It's disastrous.
When war comes, two things happen - profits go way, way up and all perishables go way, way down. There becomes a market for them.