Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Memories are doing funny things to us.
Usually you don't think about re-releasing an old movie.
For me, speaking is work. It's not like when you breathe.
In Czechoslovakia, we consider Kafka a very funny man. A humorist.
I think everybody dreamt somehow to make a film in Hollywood, you know.
What I like about masturbation is that you don't have to talk afterwards.
Ever since I was a child, I was fascinated by show business, the theater.
I'm convinced the Beatles are partly responsible for the fall of Communism.
You think you can do anything, and then you slowly learn how wrong you are.
I was born in a small town. My parents, my father was a teacher. My mother was a housewife.
Mediocrity never goes away - but neither, I hope, do those who are willing to challenge it.
Technically, you can learn everything on the set as an assistant director, and rather quickly.
I tell you, in my opinion, the cornerstone of democracy is free press - that's the cornerstone.
Individuals fighting or rebelling against the status quo, the establishment, is good for drama.
I don't think I was ever as fascinated or have had so much respect for anybody like James Cagney.
So I left with Jean Claude and went to Paris, so when the Russians came to Prague, I was in Paris.
Because I just loved to spend two years of my life in the company of Andy Kaufman and other characters.
When I came for the first time to the United States, visiting, I was absolutely fascinated by New York.
First of all, to defend my work, I had to believe that I am doing a totally silly, stupid, innocent comedy.
Humor was not important only for me, humor was important for this nation for centuries, to survive, you know.
You know what happened, you know, in 1938: France, England, you know, just sold out Czechoslovakia to Hitler.
Communists love to make films about composers because composers compose music and don't talk subversive things.
Communists love to make films about composers, because composers compose music and don't talk subversive things.
People must not think that all bad in man which is unleashed, the moment you impose censorship disappears from man.
I get out of the taxi and it's probably the only city which in reality looks better than on the postcards, New York.
Holocaust films will be made and should be made as long as we can't understand what makes people so cruel to each other.
I don't mind getting involved in a risky project as long as I don't have to stay married to it if the script turns out lousy.
I can say, with a little arrogance, that I could be an actor, a cameraman, a writer, but composers are the most mysterious people.
You either have commercial pressure or ideological pressure. I prefer commercial pressure; otherwise, you can be at the mercy of one or two idiots.
Well, I wouldn't say that this experience had any influence on my decision to do this film about Andy, because Andy was apolitical. Andy was never political.
So, thanks God, our films, our first films were suddenly being appreciated by the Western media; especially France was very good, and Switzerland was very good.
If it weren't for 'Cuckoo's Nest,' it would be very difficult for me. It gave me a cushion to live at my artistic pace and not fear I wouldn't have money to live on.
We have funny ideas about how people in mental institutions act. We think of drooling and people going booga-booga and climbing the wall. These are exceptional cases.
When you finish a film, before the first paying audience sees it, you don't have any idea. You don't know if you made a success or a flop, when it comes to the box office.
Definitely, it would be foolish to try and make my Czech films here in America, as foolish as it is when some Czech filmmakers try to make movies of America in Czechoslovakia.
When I entered the film school at the Prague Academy in the '50s, it was the hardest time in the Communist countries. The ideological control of the society was almost absolute.
The Czech movies, the quality movies, are trying to show the life in the country as it is, in an entertaining way, while in America, the majority of movies are wonderful fairy tales.
Now, after the communist take-over in 1948, the amount of feature films produced dwindled to three a year, while the school was, you know, every year another three, four, five students.
Milan Kundera was my literature professor. He's a Francophile, so he made us read French novels like 'Les Liaisons Dangereuses,' which I made a version of many years later as 'Valmont.'
You know, 20 years... the films of television when it started, the literature, radio in communist countries, they're clean as a whistle; there was no violence, no sex, no drugs, nothing.
When you make a film, you realize that the audience will be powerless to stop it or flip back to refresh their memories or skip the boring parts. They are at the mercy of your storytelling.
Well, listen, you know, the Czech saying is, you know, when you are drowning you are grabbing even a little twig. That's what all Czechs were doing, grabbing for... with the hope for this little twig.
Definitely it would be foolish to try and make my Czech films here in America, as foolish as it is when some Czech filmmakers try to make movies of America in Czechoslovakia. It was always abysmal stuff.
The way one perceives a book and a film are totally different. You read a book in the privacy of your room. You are the boss; you set the pace and rhythm of your reading. In the movie house, you can't do that.
And everything is controlled and everybody is a member of some committee, because then their watchdogs placed in the committees can control everything, what this person says or how this person think(s), you know.
Because if you lived, as I did, several years under Nazi totalitarianism, and then 20 years in communist totalitarianism, you would certainly realize how precious freedom is, and how easy it is to lose your freedom.
I think if I tried very hard, I could do a novel or a play, a poem. I could possibly paint a picture, but I know I can't write music. And still, it is the most accessible of all arts, as you know when you hear a tune.
First of all, whoever didn't want to be a member of this association or the other association, was branded, you know, like a dangerous individualist, you know, infected by the Western decadence, you know. So everybody joined.
A modern hero is very ambiguous. I went through some very rough times in Czechoslovakia - the occupation by the Germans at the end of the war. We had people going against their tanks with brooms. Are they nuts, or are they heroes?
The worst evil is - and that's the product of censorship - is the self-censorship, because that twists spines, that destroys my character because I have to think something else and say something else, I have to always control myself.