Peter Weir Quotes

(Referring to the restroom murder scene in Witness (1985): It was the most violent scene I`ve ever filmed. I still wonder if it was too violent, but I did want to have an outrage over the violence that occured in front of those innocent eyes (of the Amish boy character).

(on Harrison Ford) Harrison possesses magnetic qualities. He is capable of filling a room with his personality. If he`d been a plumber and came to fix your tap, he`s a person you`d notice. We provoke each other. It`s no cozy fireside chat.

(on Mel Gibson) Mel is the new Australian. He is going to be a very good star. He is quite different from the Australian everyone knows -- the kind Rod Taylor represents.

Normally as a director, you do look at other films and things that are relevant. But with this film, it became impossible because I became so aware of the camera placement.

I don`t know if there will ever be an ideal way of selling an original picture. Because everything you`re doing, you`re inventing.

It was immediately apparent that it was full of tricky ingredients to balance. In fact, I found it very intriguing. What held me back from saying yes to the producer was that I wasn`t sure who could play Truman.

There`s almost a fear that if you understood too deeply the way you arrived at choices, you could become self-conscious. In any case, many ideas which are full of personal meaning seem rather banal when you put words to them.

National film industries tend to move in cycles. In Australia right now, we`re on a high, a feeling of potential, which as yet shows no sign of flagging. But the word "industry" is misleading. A small national cinema has no industry in the Hollywood sense.

Well, there`s that girl on the Internet - although this isn`t an example of someone who doesn`t know they`re on - but there`s a girl on the Internet who posts one photograph every two minutes from her bedroom.

(on Mel Gibson) Mel is the new Australian. He is going to be a very good star. He is quite different from the Australian everyone knows -- the kind Rod Taylor represents.

Music stops you from thinking.

So much of the work is intuitive. The resistance you detect is just that, a kind of evasion, a sense that too much analysis will inhibit creativity.

The original version of the screenplay was much darker, and portrayed the central character as more of an Everyman. It was also set in Manhattan.

I`d love to have another film to go on to. I`m in the mood to work. But I have to be patient, you know, to find that particular kind of project. Occasionally I`ll write one myself if I can summon up the energy.

I`ve become wary of interviews in which you`re forced to go back over the reasons why you made certain decisions. You tend to rationalize what you`ve done, to intellectually review a process that is often intuitive.

Well, all these stars have their houses swept quite regularly by people who work in the surveillance security business. They come in and they look for bugs and things.