I have a very simple definition of a good movie: a good movie makes you forget you're watching a movie.
Michael Cimino
There's nothing good that comes out of war. It's simply hell on earth, and people survive, and people don't.
Family politics are worse than world politics. That's all I can say. You don't get to choose your family; you get to choose your friends. Your family is imposed upon you.
I don't believe in defeat.
A film reflects who you are as a building reflects the soul of its architect. I think what you feel and what you think and what you are is what the film is. It's not for me to talk about.
Friendship and sentiment and the giving of one's words are very important.
It was just - I mean, 6,000 people giving you a standing ovation is quite an experience.
Most people I knew had been crippled by their educations. Some were even dying spiritually.
Even the details of a rifle, which are nothing but mechanical, if they are made carefully, with attention, become beautiful, satisfying.
I've had enough rejection for 33 years. I don't need more.
When I was fifteen, I spent three weeks driving all over Brooklyn with a guy who was following his girlfriend.
I was a child prodigy. Like Michelangelo, who could draw a perfect circle at age five. I was extremely gifted. I could paint a perfect portrait of someone at age five.
I don't dispute the accounts of My Lai 4, but I think that anyone who is a student of the war, or anyone who was there, would agree that anything you could imagine happening probably happened.
Writing, by nature, is a fairly solitary occupation.
What we forget is that the Academy is a star-maker, or it reinforces the stardom of people.
I felt the need to unlearn my formal education.
We all want to experience that in our lives - a moment when we're two feet off the ground - and making movies gives you that opportunity. It comes and it goes so fast that it's unreal, but it does happen.
I would never suggest that the geography or visual environment of the film is more important than what's going on with the people, but it's a major factor in getting the right tone. Certainly, it influences the actors tremendously.
Would you ask Picasso to explain 'Guernica?' Would you ask Nabokov to explain 'Lolita?' Would you ask Tolstoy about 'War and Peace?' No, you wouldn't dare.
There is always that need to feel that you're doing your possible best.
On a movie, you often work fourteen-, sixteen-hour days, six days a week, for six months. It is so easy to let up because of fatigue.
It's one of the wonderful things that the Academy does - a talented person comes along like Mira Sorvino, and it elevates them up to stardom.
A film maker's energy and creativity don't have to end when he turns over his film.
What distinguishes Vilmos Zsigmond from other cinematographers is, of course, talent but, more, physical stamina. You just can't be great without it.
They've said everything about me that they could: racist, Marxist, rightist, homophobic, sex change - I don't know what else they could come up with.
All one has to do is look at old footage of the firebombing of Dresden during World War II and think of the people beneath those bombs. It's horrific.
I'm a frustrated would-be architect who stumbled into the would-be business of making movies.
Every great movie is about the people, even if it's a great popular success like 'Gone With the Wind.' It's really not about the Civil War. It's about Scarlett and Rhett. That's who you go to see. You're not going to root for the North or pull for the South, or, you know, it's the people you remember.
Journalism is not writing.
I've got a room full of scripts. They go to the ceiling. I can't even hardly walk into it anymore. Most are original, and there are some adaptations like 'Man's Fate.'
There have been so many false things written about me by people who don't know me.
Who cares about seeing 10,000 helicopter assaults? That's spectacle.
There's nothing but brutality and bravery or cowardice that comes out of war. That's pretty much it.
Working-class, blue-collar guys who volunteered for Vietnam were ascribed certain political beliefs. It's time that this was redressed. It had nothing to do with politics. Once these men got to Vietnam, it was a matter of survival.
When the rich kids got together, the most we ever did was cross against a red light.
Movie-making ain't for sissies.
I don't make movies to make a point; I make movies to tell stories about people.
War is war. Vietnam is no different from the Crusades.
I wouldn't have had the life I've had without movies.
Being infamous is not fun. It becomes a weird occupation in and of itself.
It's silly - you go to a plastic chapel in Vegas, you get married in 10 minutes, and it takes you 10 years to get divorced.
Because people don't see me around a lot, I'm the source of all sorts of rumour.
It's always a daily struggle to write.
'Leaving Las Vegas' is a relationship; 'Dead Man Walking' is a relationship, and they're very contained movies. They're compressed and not in wide open spaces all over the place.
Nobody lives without making mistakes.
Anybody who says they're bitter is sick in their soul. They've given up.
If you don't get it right, what's the point?
There's no service ribbon for people who fought in Korea. We lost over 30,000 men between 1951 and 1953 - as many as we lost in 15 years in Vietnam.
You couldn't make 'Heaven's Gate' today. Even were you to quadruple the resources to make the movie, you couldn't make it because the people don't exist.
I think 'American Sniper' is anti-war. It demonstrates the agony of the decision-making that goes on.
