Ted Demme Quotes (20 Quotes)

What I think happens today is that a lot of filmmakers look at other films that are retro pieces, like L.A. Confidential, and say, oh, that's period. We didn't want to do the stereotypical stuff.

You're always going to get cold. It's like life. You have to be able to deal with the idea that you can't always be on top. You can't. We're on fire now. But in my heart I know there's going to be a moment -- it's like putting out a record. When you first put out a record, it's incredible. Then it has its life, and we have to go back and make a new record to have another life.

My job is to make sure it does not become spring break out there. I can let you in, but I can't let your other five friends in. It's not based on age or looks. There's an amazing group of people from all forms of business, whether it's entertainment or music or great photographers, great art directors, great publishers, amazing businessmen and women, and it's a great mix in age. You want to maintain that glamour and classiness. It's an overall blend.

And then we watched an amazing number of movies from the late '60s and '70s, which is my favorite time, and we studied their camera movements, their stocks, the way they lit stuff, the colors they used.

I tried to stick to my game plan, which was always being aware of what my A story was - the love story between a father and his son, and that son and his daughter.

I'm at Miramax now, where I've actually been treated like a Prince.

That's why I'm really trying to produce my own stuff. This film was so good, because I produced it myself, and developed it, and made it with New Line, which is a smaller studio, so I was in control of a lot of stuff that I wasn't in control of for my other films.

The thing that's great about those guys at Miramax is the Weinstein brothers. They are the two funniest guys I've ever met in my life.

Like a Pearl Harbor, they're going into their opening weekend knowing that they spent 110 million making this movie. That pressure must be enormous.

The older I get the more I realize there's no real good guys or real bad guys, and I'm curious about how the good guys got good and how the bad guys got bad.

I was influenced by European movies, old Fellini, old Kurosawa - any sort of foreign film.

I felt that as long as we were being honest, and that we didn't bend the truth to accomplish another goal, to be entertaining or to be a happy ending, I was confident that we'd be able to tell the story the way it happened.

It's a place of fabulous people from all types of businesses movies, fashion, music, art, with politicians, photographers, graphic designers and pro athletes,

There are a lot of films that are drug dramas, and we didn't want to tell Scarface again.

We had the greatest love affair of all time.

I mean look, the thing about movie making and criticism and producing movies now, everyone compares everything to something else.

I want them to have what they need. I'll tell you this, ... I don't want to grow old in L.A. I'll make movies and do clubs somewhere else. It's a city of youth. And dreams. I'm very East Coast. I want to experience the world and L.A. is not the world. And I want to be around my family. L.A.'s a great place to do what you gotta do. When my kids are in high school, I bet you New York will be so much better.

But my humble opinion is, I'm not quite sure where I stand on the legalization of drugs - though, if tequila is legal, pot should probably be legal.

I think, on a larger note, that filmmakers and studios should start to tuck it in a little bit, because films wouldn't have the pressure they have if the word wasn't out about how expensive they were.

You know, I think everything I do cinematically for the rest of my life will probably have some direct route back to Jonathan. But I love him to death. He's like my best friend and my big brother.