As an ardent supporter of the Nietzschean conception of the eternal recurrence, I firmly believe that one cannot validate the totality of a life unless one accepts and embraces all the experiences that comprise it. That said, I sometimes wish I'd gone to film school.

Dave Itzkoff

I ended up going to NYU for film school - close to Pennsylvania - but we talked about what if I went to UCLA or USC, and my mom's whole world was caving in.

Adam F. Goldberg

Mom World Whole

I feel like a lot of my past career was going to film school, making a lot of different kinds of movies. I made a bunch of comedies, I made one drama and I made a couple musicals.

Adam Shankman

Music Movies Car

When I was going to film school, before film school, my hero was David Lynch.

Alan Taylor

T School ID

It's been a twisty-turny path for me. I was studying to be a history professor, and then I left that, went to film school, and tried to be like my heroes, like, Spike Lee and Hal Hartly.

Alan Taylor

History Art Yin

My heroes were people like Jim Jarmusch. Scorsese was my god. Spike Lee was exciting, doing exactly what we thought we were going to do: personal movies based in, and about, New York. My heroes were all participating in an economic model that was collapsing as I was finishing film school.

Alan Taylor

Movies God Art

I didn't go to film school.

Alex Garland

T School ID

I'd like to go to NYU business school and then go on to film school.

Alexa Vega

Business Us Then

Well, I think every film student goes into film school thinking they want to write and direct their own movies, and they don't realize how much goes into it, and what a process it is.

Alexis Bledel

Movies Write Well

When I switched to screenplays - 'cause I had done musicals and plays - the first assignment in film school was, you have to write a silent film. And it's tremendously helpful to learn how to do that because dialogue can be a crutch. If you can master a silent film, you're golden.

Allison Schroeder

Music Men You

I knew when I was about 14 that I wanted to be a director and that I wanted to go to NYU for film school.

Amandla Stenberg

Wanted Want Ted

In film, I don't think I'd try directing. Maybe one day, but I'd certainly want to go to film school or something before I tried to do something like that. That would be quite scary.

Amelia Warner

Car Would Want

I like acting, but I like filmmaking better. I went to film school. I want to make films.

Art Alexakis

Want Tin T

While still a young student at film school, I was lucky enough to get a golden ticket to a Martin Scorsese master class at BAFTA in Piccadilly: fancy, but technically still 'the flicks'.

Asif Kapadia

Art Young You

We were studying at Newport Film School, and I found that the only way for me to make films - because you need people and you need equipment - was that I had to be a student.

Asif Kapadia

Men You Yin

Film school was a privilege I could not afford.

Ava DuVernay

Vile T School

I didn't go to film school. I got my education on the set as a niche publicist in the film industry.

Ava DuVernay

Education Us Try

You graduate from film school and move to Hollywood. Hollywood tells you, 'We're not the place for you to make films,' so you decide you have to make a film yourself.

Barry Jenkins

Yourself Yours Your

I got into film school. I went and didn't know anything about it. Over the course of two years, I kind of got kind of good at it. You know, I had a brief moment where I wasn't sure if I could do it. I didn't know you needed light to expose film.

Barry Jenkins

Mom Men Good

I told my mother I wanted to be an actress, and the next thing I know is that I'm studying in a very expensive film school.

Bhumi Pednekar

Yin Wanted Want

Going to school in San Francisco, you're not going to meet as many people that are making films as you would if you went to film school in New York or L.A.

Boots Riley

You York Would

The real trouble with film school is that the people teaching are so far out of the industry that they don't give the students an idea of what's happening.

Brian De Palma

I was in a bookstore one afternoon, and I stumbled across this book called 'A Guide to Film Schools.' I always loved movies growing up and had never even conceived that it was something you could do for a living. Realizing most of them were in Los Angeles and knowing that was warm, I ended up applying.

Brian Helgeland

I sort of jumped out of movies and into the lifeboat of comics. I loved it right away. It was the opposite of film school. Whatever was in my imagination could end up in the finished product. There were just no limitations.

Brian K. Vaughan

After I did 'Orchids,' I enrolled back in film school and did a million and a half workshops and worked with great professors and people, trying to hopefully get better.

Bryce Dallas Howard

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.

Cary Fukunaga

I didn't go to film school, I went to acting school.

Charles S. Dutton

I didn't go to film school. I had been an actor in movies, I had been in plays, and then I just sort of jumped into it.

Christopher Guest

The public scrutiny element they don't teach you in film school. So few people are ever subjected to it.

Colin Trevorrow

Now we're here in 2009. My boys are 16 and 18, one's going to USC film school, and the other seems to be a natural comedian. So now I have to go back into show business as a senior comedian. So I hope to get Walter Brennan-type roles, Gabby Hayes kind of stuff, be the old-timer. We'll see what happens.

Dana Carvey

When I met David Green at film school he always used to offer free haircuts - he was kind of an artisan. In a lot of our films, he's constantly trying to give me weird looks.

Danny McBride

I can't even remember not wanting to go to film school.

Danny McBride

I went to film school so I have a writing and directing background, and I think a lot of the material I'm interested in writing and getting out there is stories about anti-heroes and people you should just not ordinarily root for - trying to figure out a way of appealing to people they wouldn't normally appeal to.

Danny McBride

So I just came out here to Los Angeles with a bunch of buddies I had gone to film school with. You know, for better or worse, we just tried to slug it out here.

Danny McBride

I never did theater. I was a theater major at USC my first year because I didn't get into the film school. I was biding my time, hoping to be accepted to film school, and I ended up transferring to UCLA my sophomore year.

Darren Star

As an ardent supporter of the Nietzschean conception of the eternal recurrence, I firmly believe that one cannot validate the totality of a life unless one accepts and embraces all the experiences that comprise it. That said, I sometimes wish I'd gone to film school.

Dave Itzkoff

Film is a very specific world in which I don't think you really need to go to film school.

Dave McCary

And it's just my opinion that I don't think film school is necessary for filmmakers. But I don't want to discourage someone who really wants to learn that way.

Dave McCary

I started writing this feature comedy in New York - a Chris Farley vehicle. The script was decent. When I got to LA, I met some new friends in film school and had them read my script and give me notes.

David Steinberg

I started out at Procter & Gamble marketing panty liners, so basically selling women insecurity. I thought there must be more to life than this. Then I was on set for a Dr. Scholl's commercial, and I asked one of the execs, 'How do you get a job behind the camera?' and he said, 'Film school.' So I quit and applied to NYU.

Dee Rees

After film school, I embarked on trying to promote independent films. But after a while, I realized I was breaking my back doing six-day-a-week shoots, 14-hour days, and no guarantee of distribution.

Devin Ratray

Going to film school taught me how much I already knew, and that the best way to learn about film is being on the set with professionals.

Devin Ratray

In the old days, before there was such a thing as film schools, directors learned the camera by watching other directors, and learning from their own dailies, and listening to the cameraman, and seeing what would work. Some of those guys could cut their movies in their head.

Don Ameche

I got in trouble in film school at USC because one of my Super-8 movies there, in the first semester, involved a snowmobile chase scene. I made an action scene, and they were like, 'That wasn't what you were supposed to be doing.'

Doug Liman

I went to USC film school, briefly, which is a very traditional film school.

Doug Liman

Working on '2001' was my film school. Stanley Kubrick was my mentor.

Douglas Trumbull

I was in my 30s when I finally went to film school. It was kind of always going to happen, but I did try to keep it suppressed for awhile.

Duncan Jones

I got some funky scholarships to play soccer and did well in my SATs, so I went off to college and then grad school but found that that wasn't me. My family, relieved I seemed to have come to my senses, were happy to let me go to film school.

Duncan Jones

I was a kid who went to film school and fell into acting.

Edward Burns

What I've always thought I would do is make a bunch of movies and then stop to teach for awhile. And then just teach at film schools - you know, teach children.

Eli Roth

I went to Princeton to major in comparative literature. I never went to film school, but I studied storytelling across mediums - poems, literature, film, and journalism.

Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi