John Boorman Quotes (12 Quotes)

When actors are being defensive and defending their position, that is when you get less than good acting.

I think that as a director you have to at the very least shape the script structure it. Otherwise you're not really doing your job.

It's so easy to manipulate an audience, but it's nearly always clear that you are being manipulated. I think even people that are not critically attuned are aware of cynical manipulation in film.

All the great legends are Templates for human behavior. I would define a myth as a story that has survived.

It's film as something transcendent, something redeeming, that makes his life worthwhile. It's a tremendously life-affirming film. And yet it's about not making a film. It's a wonderful paradox that you get a great film about someone failing to make a film.

Before I start shooting I have all the actors know where we are going with every scene, what the intention is and where we are trying to get to.

I was in Japan, and my assistant director had worked with Kurosawa. I used quite of number of Kurosawa's crew.

What is passion It is surely the becoming of a person. Are we not, for most of our lives, marking time Most of our being is at rest, unlived. In passion, the body and the spirit seek expression outside of self. Passion is all that is other from self. Sex is only interesting when it releases passion. The more extreme and the more expressed that passion is, the more unbearable does life seem without it. It reminds us that if passion dies or is denied, we are partly dead and that soon, come what may, we will be wholly so.

I look at the story, I look at the idea and just try to think of it in terms of that whole body of myth and see where the characters fit in and what they ought to be doing-all those archetypes are there to play with.

I only storyboard scenes that require special effects, where it is necessary to communicate through pictures.

You can't get an actor to do something that is beyond his range, so you have to be aware of the range of the actor and, if necessary, alter the part to suit the actor.

There were two sides to David Lean: on the one side, he was kind of a rather stiff, disciplined Englishman. And then he had this kind of romantic side to him. I think being true to both sides of your nature is important.