The first movie I saw - and I don't know if it influenced me - was Ben Hur. We watched it outside in a corn field, and it ran backwards, so the first movie I ever saw was Ben Hur backwards.
That's the trouble with anything which essentially has a lot of bits that are physically impossible: You're left, stuck, in the studio. And that's a shame. You're making a movie. You don't want it to stay put, you want it to be a movie - to move.
You can't be an openly gay movie star. You can't be an openly gay pop star, really - minus Ricky Martin.
I've made some stupid decisions, so I have to be careful. I once said 'no' to a film that was a number-one hit. And 'Date Movie' had the smallest budget of any movie I'd been in, and it went to the top of the box office.
Last summer when we were preparing for the movie, I actually kind of wanted to stay fairly uninformed about it. As we went through the process that we do in the movie, I wanted to be a little wide-eyed.
Storytelling is the only studio movie where the censorship is perfectly clear, the only studio movie with a big red box covering up a shot. I take pride in that - and, of course, in having avoided the fate of Eyes Wide Shut.
I've always been led to believe that the ultimate goal for an author is the movie deal. Now I understand that the movie deal is merely a MEANS TO A MUCH HIGHER END: NAIL POLISH.
I think people like to be thrilled and excited. And a scary movie is a safe way to do that because you're not actually doing it. It's entertainment. You know that you're in the confines of this two-hour space of safety in the movie house.
When I got off '24,' pretty soon after that I did a movie that took place in the '70s, this movie with Jimmy Caan and Gena Rowlands, and I needed to kind of have that '70s pouffy housewife hair.
People say it's a movie about boxing, but... I don't agree at all. I don't think it's a movie about boxing. Boxing is like a platform. It's just a stage where this is played out.
They tell us in magazines and in ads, 'Oh, you should look like this, you should wear this, you should look like this movie star, or you're nothing.' And so we're all totally unsatisfied.
I think what sets this one apart is that there are two horror movie icons finally battling each other. You actually see them beat the crap out of each other instead of just terrorizing the kids in the movie.
I actually had a movie green lit at Disney the same week 'Burlesque' was green lit - a movie for Disney called 'Mash-Up', about a high school marching band.
Movies touch our hearts and awaken our vision, and change the way we see things. They take us to other places, they open doors and minds. Movies are the memories of our life time, we need to keep them alive.
I don't want egos and personalities on the set that make it more difficult to make the film. I don't want people who take the focus away from the movie and the ideas behind the movie.
I wasn't straining at the bit to become a movie star any more than I had plotted to get out of vaudeville and into Broadway musicals.
Lying about one's sexuality seems to be one of the ridiculous rules of what constitutes being a Hollywood movie star. Obviously, my own experience of working and continuing to work as an out gay actor is exactly that - working as an actor and not as ...
If you go to a movie and it's a great experience, the experience at the end of it is always like this sadness that it's over, that your time with these characters is finished. There's almost like an achy feeling that I have when I go to a movie that ...
I firmly believe that you can't get a good movie without risking a bad movie. A good adaptation of your book is worth it because it is such a wonderful experience to see your world translated onto the screen.
I've made it my mission to make movies starring African American actors and about the African American experience and put them in the mainstream. They're very universal stories I've told - every movie I've done.
I always used to wonder why American actors were getting fat, then I made a U.S. movie. I'm seeing all the food every day, and there's lots of waiting around because making an American movie is very slow.
