John Hurt Quotes About Film
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It's quite a dangerous career move to go wilfully on making films that may not find a distributor.
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Film has changed vastly in the time that I've been an actor, and it's, I think, very much for the better. I think there are just magnificent films now, and they're blossoming in the way that the novel did years ago.
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I'm not accustomed to doing films without seeing the script. There are certain people that are auteurs, and you accept them regardless of whether you see a script or not. But Spielberg is not an auteur.
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The first film is everything you want to say and how you want to say it. Lots of directors will do that and do it really well, but the second film is not so easy.
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In the States it's more and more difficult to get an independent film off the ground, and you certainly wont get the opportunity to play something like that in a studio movie.
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If I'm in theatre, cinema doesn't even cross my mind. Similarly when I'm making a film, theatre doesn't cross my mind.
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I find myself more interested in producing. Not because I'm interested in the financial side of it, but just getting together the right elements to make a film, that side of production. I would not be good on the financial side. It would be a disaster from the beginning.
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There are certain people that when they ask you to do a film, you just say, "Where and when?"
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I left drama school and went straight into a 10-week film for which I was paid £75 I might say, which for 1962 was one heck of a lot of money.
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A very, very impressive director, Tomas Alfredson. It's only his second film [ 'Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy'], but he's a real find.
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I have lots of favourite memories but I can't say that I have a favourite film.
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I loved working with [ Lars Von Trier], but I've done two films before, so I was quite used to him.He's a man of incredible moods of course, but he's also a hugely perceptive man, and there's no getting away from that. And he's able to put that perception into something like film, so we're very lucky.
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I got used to [ Lars Von Trier] doing the narration for 'Dogville' and 'Manderley.' And I said to him I do these narrations for you but you never put me in a film! So he called my bluff and put me in 'Melancholia' and I was thrilled about that.
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I've done lots of films with first directors, so it's not unusual for me.
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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.
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I'd say the film to avoid is a director's second film, particularly if his first film was a big success. The second film is where you've really needed to have learned something.
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Also the wonderful thing about film, you can see light at the end of the tunnel. You did realize that it is going to come to an end at some stage.
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On the other hand, you get other films that are spread over a much longer period of time and it's entirely exhausting. But there's always light at the end of the tunnel with a film.
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If you've got a great crew it's intense, but its quite short. 'The Elephant Man' was longer than most, for an independent film. That was a 14 week film. But it was because of the intrinsic difficulties. We had to invent a different way of filming, because the makeup was so long. A working day for me with a full makeup on was nineteen hours. So obviously you couldn't do that twice running.
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Films don't take as long as people think. 'Harry Potter,' people always used to say, 'Well, my God, do you ever get any time to yourself?' I think I did, in 'Harry Potter,' over a 12 year period I did five days. So it's not exactly exhausting.
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The director [Elfar Adalsteins] came to me through my agent and I had a read of the script [of the "Sailcloth]. I thought immediately this is someone who is writing for the cinema. Not having to go through the tedious business of taking something from literature and making that awful leap that is so difficult to make anyway, from literature to cinema. It's refreshing to be able to deal with a subject like that, to be written where the driving force is the image on screen and you don't need any words. The more that we can do that [in film], the better.
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People say you never retire in this [film] business and I say, well, not until they retire you.
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The common misconception is that we create films for ourselves. And I really don't do it for myself. I get stopped in the street by people saying, "Do you mind if I say this about your work?" Do I mind? I'm delighted. I do it for you. It's not for me. It's my living, yes, sure.
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By the time I came to do the final ones [Harry Potter's film], I was working on something that was massively successful. There was a huge difference in indulgence and all sorts of stuff. A very big difference in peoples' attitudes. They were very pleased with themselves. In human terms, it was quite interesting to see the difference.
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I mark a script like an exam, and I try not to do anything under 50 per cent. Similarly with the part. And also film is a peculiar thing, parts don't necessarily read in script form anything like as well as they can do when it comes to materialising.
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I've spent a great deal of my life doing independent film, and that is partly because the subject matter interests me and partly because that is the basis of the film industry. That's where the film-makers come from, it's where they start and sometimes its where they should have stayed.
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It's quite interesting, looking back at the first one [film about Harry Potter], nobody knew whether or not it was going to be successful as a film. The books were of course already very successful, but that's happened before, where the books were successful and the films weren't at all. But it turned out that they were.
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