'Alien' is a C film elevated to an A film, honestly, by it being well done and a great monster. If it hadn't had that great monster, even with a wonderful cast, it wouldn't have been as good, I don't think.
In Australia, they set up a special fund to kick films off. It was quite an enlightened sort of move. You could go to this government bureau with scripts and and get finance for films.
I turn up in Los Angeles every now and then, so I can get some big money films in order to finance my smaller money films.
It's very difficult to break into motion pictures, but it's oddly easier for directors today because of independent films and cable, who have inherited for the most part those films of substance that the studios are reluctant to finance.
The action films I will make in the future will be more believable and character-based. I am now on my second cycle of fame, and I want to make films that smell real and are truthful.
I love film, but it's funny going to drama school for three years, where you spend most of your time training for theatre, then coming out and just doing films.
My films are very rooted in specific people's point of view. Some film-makers give a more global point of view, like God looking down at the characters.
Sundance is going to be a defining moment in my life. But the unfortunate thing about Sundance is, when you have a film there, you can't have the opportunity to see other films.
There are characters in movies who I call 'film characters.' They don't exist in real life. They exist to play out a scenario. They can be in fantastic films, but they are not real characters; what happens to them is not lifelike.
Doing that, then doing a lot of theater, which I love. Doing guest stars, did two independent films that are going around to all these festivals. Both of them are going to be at the Lake Tahoe Film Festival.
One of the things about the '70s films I love - the films 'Nightcrawler' is being compared to, like, 'Taxi Driver' - is that they never put their flawed characters into any one box.
Strange - I'm not much of a film person. I love watching films, but they don't stay with me the way books do. Stranger still, because my husband is a screenwriter!
Every day I spend in Hollywood, I start to realize how many films are made with no heart and no love. They just do it for the paycheck, and I cannot imagine making a film that way.
If 'Trek' is a hit, we'd love to do a series of films - a regular event. Look at James Bond's films. They've been around since the early sixties.
I didn't come from a background of films. I didn't even really ever watch films. The fact is, my parents weren't into that stuff, and neither was I.
In studio films, everything has to be boxed in, everybody needs to know beforehand - this is comedy, this is sci-fi, this is drama - and what's the point of independent film if you don't get to experiment?
I really fight hard to make things film where they're supposed to be filmed. If something is supposed to be in New York, then it has to be in New York.
We have a documentary film festival in Mexico. It's really original. It's called Ambulante, and it's a film festival that travels around several cities in Mexico.
I've been lucky enough to do a few films that will last longer than an opening weekend and those films are the ones I'm proud of.
I'll definitely say that, before film school, I didn't have much of a film-history background. I didn't know much about classic cinema.
I used to hate doing color. I hated transparency film. The way I did color was by not wanting to know what kind of film was in my camera.
