A few quotes on film by Peter Bogdanovich from Conversations at the American Film Institute with the Great Moviemakers:
“Part of my training was to think only in terms of what is needed. The time to make up your mind about what the scene is about, and how and where it should be played, is on the set during filming and not in the cutting room, otherwise you’re wasting time shooting things you’re not going to need. You can cut almost anything together in thirty different ways if you have enough footage, but that doesn’t mean it’s the right way to play the scene. The one thing that the old-timers spoke about most often was their pride in being able to make films quickly and economically.”
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“I’m not consciously anti-academic, it’s just not in my nature. Only occasionally do I explain what a film ‘means.’ I don’t like to get philosophical about any films, even my own. I’m much more of an instinctual artist than people give me credit for, because they think I’m paying homage to various things with my films.”
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“As Renoir once said in an interview with Jacques Rivette, ‘When we have achieved total realism, we will have achieved total decadence.’ My interpretation of that is that today, with special effects, you can do anything on film. But who cares? The magic is gone. The audience knows it’s all just one big expensive box of tricks. It used to be exciting when Douglas Fairbanks jumped up onto a table. The whole idea of suspension of disbelief has evaporated. Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd did all their own stunts, which is what makes them so brilliant. Someone once complained to Chaplin that his camera angles weren’t interesting. He said, ‘They don’t have to be. I’m interesting.’ Part of the greatness of movies is showing something happening in real time.”
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“You must never give a damn if the whole thing falls apart. ‘It doesn’t matter – we’ll do something else’: that’s the only way to do pictures, because when you start caring they kill you. When you start saying, ‘If I don’t make this picture I’m going to die,’ they will make you pay.”
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“It’s amazing, when you see movies again, how they change. I’ve seen pictures that I adored ten years ago and now think they are crap, and pictures I hated ten years ago and now think are masterpieces. Actually, what changes is you.”