Noir Quotes

There were some things that I found I really enjoyed singing about; like, on the title track, there`s this film-noir character of a woman who`s sort of losing it in a room.

It sort of started with this idea of doing a teen noir show. The first-person, hard-boiled narrative is inherent in noir. I wanted her to sound like a 17-year-old female Raymond Chandler.

I guess what`s most surprised me in most of the reviews is that they don`t seem to get the noir story in the dream sequence, so they analyze it like a straight noir movie.

But, number one, I think traditional noir doesn`t work in contemporary storytelling because we don`t live in that world anymore.

That`s what noir feels like to me. It feels like some kind of recurring dream, with very strong archetypes operating. You know, the guilty girl being pursued, falling, all kinds of stuff that we see in our dreams all the time.

That was certainly true the first time, when I did Body Heat, the first movie that I directed. I was looking for a vessel to tell a certain kind of story, and I was a huge fan of Film Noir, and what I liked about it was that it was so extreme in style.

(talking about his character in Jackie Brown): "This is the great noir hero.If Humphrey Bogart or Robert Mitchum were around today, they`d be playing that role."

Yes, to me that`s one of the most compelling fears in film noir and the psychological thriller genre - that fear of conspiracy. It`s definitely something that I have a fear of - not being in control of your own life. I think that`s something people can relate to, and those genres are most successful when they derive the material from genuine fears that people have.

I was always into noir. When I lived in Vermont I was drawing stuff that looked like an amateur doing `Sin City`. When I first got to New York I was swiftly informed that they only did guys in tights.

The noir hero is a knight in blood caked armor. He`s dirty and he does his best to deny the fact that he`s a hero the whole time.

I think the public has always been fascinated by crime. Crime in American fiction dates from the 20s, 30s and 40s in potboiler novels and film noir, not to mention tabloid journalism. In the past few years, TV just figured out a way to capitalize on that in a different manner.