The secret to film is that it's an illusion.
Learning to make films is very easy. Learning what to make films about is very hard.
The script is what you`ve dreamed up - this is what it should be. The film is what you end up with.
All of my films have been very hard to understand at the script stage because they're very different. At the time I did them they were not conventional. The executives could only think in terms of what they'd already seen. It's hard for them to think in terms of what has never been done before.
May the Force be with you.
I loved photography and everybody said it was a crazy thing to do because in those days nobody made it into the film business. I mean, unless you were related to somebody there was no way in.
The secret to the movie business, or any business, is to get a good education in a subject besides film - whether it's history, psychology, economics, or architecture - so you have something to make a movie about. All the skill in the world isn't going to help you unless you have something to say.
In my films, all the great things are put together. It's not like one kind of ice cream but rather a very big Sundae.
I've always tried to be aware of what I say in my films, because all of us who make motion pictures are teachers - teachers with very loud voices.
Learning to make films is very easy. Learning what to make films about is very hard. What you’ve really got to do is focus on learning as much about life, and about various aspects of it first.
There's nothing worse than the frustration of having somebody who you feel doesn't get what you're doing, trying to turn it into something else. It's a very, very annoying and sort of frustrating thing and I just never wanted to go through it. I was very fortunate as I came up through the film business that I was able to insulate myself from that.
From the outset, I conceived Star Wars as a series of six films, or two trilogies.
Kurosawa was one of film's true greats. His ability to transform a vision into a powerful work of art is unparalleled.
I've had much more down in my life than I've had up. And much more struggle. First of all, when I went into the film school everybody said, "What are you doing? This is a complete dead-end for a career."
Sometimes people are surprised to learn that most of the films I've made don't work. They've been released but nobody has ever seen them. Maybe 40 percent of them are very successful. That's a very high percentage; most people have maybe 10 or 15 percent of their films work.
Making a film is like putting out a fire with sieve. There are so many elements, and it gets so complicated.
One of the things that will never get explained in the films is how Ben was able to retain his identity, because it happened somewhere between the third and fourth movies. I set up that this is a discipline that he learned from Yoda; Yoda told him how to do that.
No film ever ends up exactly as you would like it to, but with minor exceptions, THX came out pretty much as I had visualized it, thanks to some excellent assistance -- and a whole lot of luck.
I want to live where I want to live, and I will make films because I love to make films.
When my films don't work it's usually because I tried some very experimental idea. I tried new ideas and they just didn't work, as opposed to trying to do something conventional and having it be so conventional nobody wanted to see it.
Film is a very tight little box. If you don't fit in that box, you're gone. Television, there's more room to move around.
I felt that one of the major issues in the third film is that Luke is finally on his own and has to fight Vader and the Emperor by himself. If you get a sense that Yoda or Ben is there to help him or to somehow influence him, it diminishes the power of the scene.
As you go through history, I didn't think it was going to get quite this close. So it's just one of those recurring things. I hope this doesn't come true in our country. Maybe the film will waken people to the situation.
As I talk to film students now especially, I say, "The easiest job you'll ever get is to try to make your first film." That's the easy one to get, is the first film because nobody knows whether you can make a film or not.
You have to have a thick enough skin to cope with the criticism. I'm very self-critical and I have a lot of friends that I trust who are film directors and writers and people in my profession.
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