I often put any project I write in a different decade just to roll the thought around in my head. There's a thriller I've written that I think would be nice to set in the '70s or '80s, just to take cell phones away from the movie. There's nothing like the piercing ring of an old-school telephone to really scare an audience.

I like 'Reanimator,' and I like 'Evil Dead 2.' But I really like the Corman movies from the late '60s and early '70s, and my favorite is 'The Mask of Red Death' with Vincent Price because - spoiler alert - but at the end of the movie, Vincent Price, he's the evil prince, and to kill him, his court just, like, dances at him.

There's a tremendous difference between alone and lonely. You could be lonely in a group of people. I like being alone. I like eating by myself. I go home at night and just watch a movie or hang out with my dog. I have to exert myself and really say, oh God, I've got to see my friends 'cause I'm too content being by myself.

I got my story, my dream, from America. The hero I had is Forrest Gump... I like that guy. I've been watching that movie about 10 times. Every time I get frustrated, I watch the movie. I watched the movie before I came here again to New York. I watched the movie again telling me that no matter whatever changed, you are you.

I had to act in a school play when I was about ten years old. I really didn't want to do it. But everyone had to do it so I didn't have a choice. A talent agent came and watched it and later gave me some work. It's funny because I'd always known that I wanted a movie career. I just didn't think that I would be in the movies.

My favorite actor was, is, Michael Keaton. Certainly growing up, in the movie 'Night Shift' he did something brand new that I hadn't seen before that we all steal from now. And then it was in 1987 he did the movie 'Clean and Sober' and 'Beetlejuice' in the same year, and that was when I said, 'Wow, that's what I want to do.'

I've always found that when you're trying to create illusions with sound, especially in a science fiction or fantasy movie, that pulling sounds from the world around us is a great way to cement that illusion because you can go out and record an elevator in George Lucas's house or something, and it will have that motor sound.

Too many Broadway actors in motion pictures lost their grip on success--had a feeling that none of it had ever happened on that sun-drenched coast, that the coast itself did not exist, there was no California. It had dropped away like a hasty dream and nothing could ever have been like the things they thought they remembered.

Entertainment must be a satisfying emotional experience, a stirring of the heart. We need all kinds of young men and women. Those people with an artist's eye and an executive's brain that we term directors. Those wrestlers with their souls and typewriters known as authors. The beggars on horseback called actors and actresses.

There's book smart, there is street smart, there's relationship smart, there's too many different kinds of smarts to know all of them. Everybody doesn't know every kind of smart. There's money smart, there's movie smart, there's computer smart. There's just too many different kinds of smarts for people to know all the smarts.

I chose 'Mr. & Mrs. Smith' specifically 'cause I had just made 'The Bourne Identity' and made a film that glamorized being an action hero, and I wanted to make the exact opposite. I wanted to make a movie that glamorized maintaining a marriage, and that made the action hero part seem easy and made the marriage part seem hard.

We're saved somewhat by Google. You can - when you're all sitting around the table desperately snapping your fingers in the hopes of remembering the name of that movie that you can't remember the name of - you can make people think that you are not as old as you actually are because you have the technology to find the answer.

The plot of a movie is its motor. It is not an accident that people call pictures 'vehicles' for stars. A vehicle has to move. A plotless story is like an expensive car with a wonderful body design, luxurious seats, upholstery, headlights (production, direction, cast) - and no motor under its hood. That is why it gets nowhere.

The most amazing thing for me is that every single person who sees a movie, not necessarily one of my movies, brings a whole set of unique experiences. Now, through careful manipulation and good storytelling, you can get everybody to clap at the same time, to hopefully laugh at the same time, and to be afraid at the same time.

I remember seeing a movie with Jose Ferrer and Rosemary Clooney where they were husband and wife, and they got in bed, and he had on polka-dot pajamas and she had on striped pajamas, and when they got up the next morning he had on the striped pajamas and she had the polka dot pajamas, and that was considered racy at that time!

When I was three and a half years old, I heard my big sister tell my mum that at school that day all the kids sat on the floor and watched 'The Neverending Story.' Having never heard of the movie, I concluded that this was what school must be: sitting cross legged on the floor listening to a never-ending story. Page after page.

What's wonderful about 'Star Trek' having been rebooted so successfully by the J. J. Abrams movie franchise is that - the corollary effect is that it creates a new generation of fans, and they're interested in all of it. They don't just sit around and wait for the next movie to come out; they'll go back and re-examine episodes.

On the first 'Indiana Jones' movie, I tore an ACL in one of my knees - can't remember which knee. The scene in which I was fighting the big German mechanic on an airplane called a flying wing, I was run over by the landing gear and injured my knee, but I can't remember which one it was. Lots of bumps and injuries along the way.

Sometimes I take the watch, or I take the shoes, but usually the souvenir is to take the life you had with those directors, or the crew - the camera person, the lighting person. When you finish a film it's like a little death. You had a family for a bit, and you finish the movie and you probably will never see each other again.

It was so embarrassing, everytime I see it, I blush. Imagine if you saw yourselves like that. It's one thing to get dressed up and do the movie star thing, but I mean, it's my job to be outside of that and it's not like I'm on the outside when they're all watching me. [About the famous car wash scene from One Night at McCool's]

A huge part of what we do as actors is learning to ignore the camera, as if it's not even there, while simultaneously being very aware of the camera and what it's capturing, because you can give the best performance of your life, but if you do it with the back of your head facing the camera, it's going to get cut from the movie.

'Lonesome Dove' was the movie. I watched that over and over and over again, and I know every line. It was one that I loved as a kid for all the horses and characters that went over my head, but then the older I got, I realized how amazing it was on so many other different levels - Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones' relationship.

And what movies we saw! All the actors and actresses whose photographs I collected, with their look of eternity! Their radiance, their eyes, their faces, their voices, the suavity of their movements! Their clothes! Even in prison movies, the stars shone in their prison clothes as if tailors had accompanied them in their downfall.

The funny thing as an actor is that you show up on the set, and your key goal really is to make the scenes that you're involved in honest and real. You're not concerned with the technical aspect of things, and then you sit in the movie theater, and you watch it with everyone else, you realize that, 'Man, this is pretty exciting.'

When in a movie like 'Housefull' you have to create comedy out of falling on a glass table or jumping from huge heights, it's all action, but packaged as comedy. Here you don't just have to perform a heavy-duty action sequence, but you have to make it look funny and that is really difficult. But it's fun... and I really enjoy it.

When I first came up in the wrestling business, there was a movie called 'The California Dolls' about a female tag team - girls who are struggling trying to make it in the wrestling world. I started out in a tag team, and my name was Britani Knight, and my dad named us after The California Dolls. We were called The Norfolk Dolls.

I got into Facebook late, and I think if you get into Facebook late, you tend to use it the right way, as opposed to the people who got into it sooner and friended everybody and now have a thousand friends. I keep it at about 80 or so, and they're all people I know. Just because I do a movie doesn't mean I friend everybody in it.

It would be nice to make a movie that other people want to make, because every one of these movies, I basically have to find the only company in the world that's willing to make it, and it's always a big challenge. I end up spending a tremendous amount of energy and time trying to get money to make these movies and it's exhausting.

I've done two motorcycle pictures: I did 'Beyond The Law,' and I did one produced by Tarantino called 'Hell Ride,' with Dennis Hopper and David Carradine and Vinnie Jones. And I just think 'Hell Ride' was a lot more of what a biker movie should be. But the good part of 'Beyond The Law' was that I had a good time with Charlie Sheen.

The director of 'Independence Day,' 'Godzilla' and 'The Patriot' has certain attributes, all of which are given full vent in 'The Day After Tomorrow.' He's crude, stupid, slick, cornball, predictable, laughable, relentless, trivial and, the sum of all these, ridiculous. He's never made a movie you could believe and he still hasn't.

The discussion of 'V for Vendetta' - on Pinocchio Theory in particular - has been far more interesting than the film deserved. Yes, there is a certain frission in seeing a major Hollywood movie refusing to unequivocally condemn terrorism, but the political analysis in the film (as in the original comic) is really rather threadbare.

I remember hearing someone say that good acting is more about taking off a mask than putting one on, and in movie acting, certainly that's true. With the camera so close, you can see right down into your soul, hopefully. So being able to do that in a way is terrifying, and in another way, truly liberating. And I like that about it.

The trick of this thing and the beauty of this thing is that it's a cowboy movie first and then stuff happens. Even after stuff happens it doesn't change - it hasn't suddenly changed into another kind of movie. It's still a cowboy movie. And that's what's incredible about it because nobody has done that before, that's new territory.

It sucks to be the runner-up because I've been the runner-up for a long time in my career. I would get so close and then lose a huge movie and sometimes it's one kid who beats you out for three different movies. It's so frustrating at the time, but what's so great is the lesson you take from that, which is, 'I've got to get better.'

I won't call my work entertainment. It's exploring. It's asking questions of people, constantly. 'How much do you feel? How much do you know? Are you aware of this? Can you cope with this?' A good movie will ask you questions you don't already know the answers to. Why would I want to make a film about something I already understand?

The academy which boasts of 6,000 to 8,000 voting members are most likely to get swayed by the national mood in the US. There is a point person for every movie at the Oscars, who is supposed to promote the film and is trusted by the panel. By keeping all these in mind, Tamil cinema making its way to the final list is quite ambitious.

When you're in a movie with Will Ferrell, well, it's time to at least sometimes throw the script away. And that character in 'Talladega Nights' I found a lot easier to kind of riff with because I related to it more, those kind of Southern, almost rednecky guys. That's a culture that I'm familiar with, that makes sense for me to spew.

'Rocky' is a movie that just happens to be about boxing. It's really about characters and story lines and relationships and all those things, and the backdrop is boxing. You can go back and watch the final fight in 'Rocky' a thousand times. If you dig that movie, if you like the characters, you'll watch the whole movie over and over.

I spent money, and I kept thinking, 'I get one more movie and I'll wipe these bills out,' but that movie never came. That black pride, I said, 'Man, I'm going to hang in there, I'm going to pay these bills.' So you owe a million dollars. 'I can pay that.' OK, fines, fees, now you owe two and a half million. 'But I didn't do nothin'!'

There was one incident at a movie theater where my girl got mad at these guys who were talking behind us. I never looked back there, but she was like, 'Will you all just shut up!' And I just got up and moved three rows in front. She was like, 'What are you doing?!' I was like, 'You better get up here! I don't play the fighting games.'

Regarding 'Ferris Bueller,' I was in the Czech Republic once, in Prague, making a movie at the same time as Jeffrey Jones, who played the principal, who was making a different movie. The Super Bowl was going to be playing at this bar at midnight, so we decided we would go watch the Super Bowl at this bar at midnight in Prague together.

I know what you're thinking. Did he fire six shots or only five? Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I've kinda lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: "Do I feel lucky?" Well, do ya, punk?

I see similarities in the sports I played growing up in the sense of how I tackle a role when I get a job. A lot of effort goes in on an individual basis. There is a lot of time spent by yourself working on your craft and what you have to do. But, at the end of the day, you're there to serve the movie just like you would the rugby team.

What I always tell people is... Unless you are so passionate about filmmaking that you would rather live out of your car than not do it, find something else to do as a career and do filmmaking as a hobby. This industry is one of the hardest to break into and be successful. It takes a lot of passion and dedication for it to get anywhere.

Life isn't about the final moments, it's about the journey, it's about process. What makes 'Rocky' work as a movie is seeing him working his way up from the streets to the arena and the fight of his life. You could just show that fight, and it would be great, but seeing that journey illuminates that fight and adds profound meaning to it.

I love the movies, and when I go to see a movie that's been made from one of my books, I know that it isn't going to be exactly like my novel because a lot of other people have interpreted it. But I also know it has an idea that I'll like because that idea occurred to me, and I spent a year, or a year and a half of my life working on it.

I wanna be in a movie, I wanna have a clothing line, I wanna put myself in a position where, when I'm dead and gone, or I can't rap anymore, that's still moving. Tupac and Biggie, they've been dead 10-plus years and people talk about them everyday. I'm gonna try to speak everything into existence. I know the music is my key to get there.

I carry my own film guys with me now. People think that's a huge expense, but with technology like it is these days, it's not. You can film videos and everything with a Canon Mark II, and shoot a movie. They're doing it for next to nothing, by comparison. I can do ten videos for a project for the price of one mainstream video in the past.

If you have a friend who suffers, you have to help him.«My dear friend, you are on safe ground. Everything is okay now. Why do you continue to suffer? Don't go back to the past. It's only a ghost; it's unreal». And whenever we recognize that these are only movies and pictures, not reality, we are free. That is the practice of mindfulness.

When I was an actor in some movies a long time ago, I was so curious about all the camera movements - why is the camera placed here, and why does it move like this? And why the set and the background, the color? It's a lot of questions for me to ask, because I was so interested, not only in acting, but also the whole process of filmmaking.

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