Filmmaking Quotes Quotes

“When opportunities knock on your door, don't wait too long to decide because when you take too much time, the decision will be made for you — typically, this will not be to your benefit.”
― Jen Alvares

“It's important to understand that when you’re involved in a project, it's everybody’s job to work together for the sake of a project’s success. In no circumstances can you allow yourself to become another problem that everybody has to deal with.”
― Jen Alvares

“Building a successful career is a long-term endeavor. In many cases, it will depend not just on your talent and hard work but also on the positive connections that you make with other industry professionals and on the realization that your own success is rooted in your ability to help others first.”
― Jen Alvares

“Ego is probably the most common reason people would avoid working with you. People like to work with people they like, and ego may hinder your ability to get on the list of likable individuals. Even more importantly, ego is also counterproductive to teamwork, which is essential for almost all industries, especially filmmaking.”
― Jen Alvares

“It’s essential to be comfortable asking for advice or help — after all, there is a reason we have dozens of different specialists that come together to work on a film project.”
― Jen Alvares

“Be enthusiastically open to opportunities that come your way. Don’t rush to say ‘no’ but instead think about how you can make it work and how it can help your career down the line.”
― Jen Alvares

“Nobody will wait around for your decision — things move fast, and what was suggested to you yesterday might be taken away today by somebody else who chose to move faster.”
― Jen Alvares

“Director of 48 Hrs. (1982), Walter Hill, says of the studio in the early-1980s, 'Paramount in those days was a very unpleasant place to work. That was their style.”
― Kim Masters, The Keys to the Kingdom: The Rise of Michael Eisner and the Fall of Everybody Else

“The first time Polly Platt met Jim Brooks to discuss Terms of Endear­ment (1983), she was distinctly unimpressed. “I was infuriated that he was that late,” she recalls. “Fifteen minutes or half an hour, who cares, but to be a whole hour late.” She waited for him at Gladstone’s, a tacky tourist joint on the Pacific Coast Highway. “I just remember I didn’t like him ... I just didn’t like his turn of phrase ... I didn’t like the way he referred to the people. I didn’t like the people he was talk­ing about working with.”
― Rachel Abramowitz, Is That a Gun in Your Pocket?: The Truth About Female Power in Hollywood

“PAULINE KAEL: "In all probability Michael Cimino could read Steven Bach a lot better than Bach could read Cimino.”
― Steven Bach, Final Cut: Art, Money, and Ego in the Making of Heaven's Gate, the Film That Sank United Artists

“On March 11, 1980, Steven Bach was given some shocking news: Andy Albeck told him that David Field had handed in his resignation and was going to 20th Century Fox. It was announced in the press as being for the usual boilerplate “personal reasons.” But everyone at Fox soon learned the real reason for his fleeing United Artists (once principle photography had finally wrapped on Heaven’s Gate)…

DAVID FIELD: “Everyone thought it was because of Heaven’s Gate. In fact, it was because I could not go on working with Steven Bach.

”
― Steven Bach, Final Cut: Art, Money, and Ego in the Making of Heaven's Gate, the Film That Sank United Artists