Ted Demme 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.

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

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.

There are a lot of films that are drug dramas, and we didn`t want to tell Scarface again.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.