Best 15 quotes of Terry Zwigoff on MyQuotes

Because I found myself telling the story of his family to people without the visual aids that I was able to employ by filming them eventually. But I very much knew exactly what I was going to do.

Certain types of films will never test well. My films never seem to test well.

Dialogue that's distinctive, funny, peculiar, and specific is the main thing that makes me want to get involved with a film to begin with.

I hope they get something of interest out of it, but I'd rather they all hate it and I like it, instead of vice versa... I make films to please myself first, and if the audience likes them, all the better.

I never saw a department store Santa as a kid. My mother was afraid to take me.

I never thought in terms of a "breakthrough" film. I wasn't looking for fame or a career path into Hollywood. I was doing it for myself. I just wanted to make a film that I really loved. If other people liked it, great. But you can never guess what other people are going to like.

I think I have pretty good taste in the projects I choose to take on. It's a blessing and a curse - I certainly could have worked a lot more if I wasn't as selective, but I just can't bring myself to spend two years of my life slaving away on some project I'm not really enthused about.

It makes it difficult to decide which to go see, since no film about say, some tragic genocide in Africa is going to get a bad review even if it's poorly made.

I try to make the set as relaxed and fun and stress-free as humanly possible, while still having control over things. It's usually tension that hurts a performance or makes it seem self-conscious.

It's certainly a difficult time right now to try to make small, smart films. I'm not trying to be self-serving, but you get to Hollywood, and if you want to make something big and loud and dumb, it's pretty easy.

I was inspired to do anything I could to get out of what I was doing... today, I'm motivated to pay the bills.

Luckily, he was in the process of moving to France at the time, anyway. But if he had stayed in the States, I don't know how he would have handled that, because it was getting pretty crazy. I mean, a celebrity which he really did not welcome. And I can't blame him.

Saying that all documentaries are the same is like saying all foreign films are the same.

That would be getting up at 5 am... I don't understand why film's shoot such brutal hours. I think it'd be worth it to not be so strictly cost-effective and have an 8 hour day. The film's would benefit in the end.

There's no choice left in America anymore. Anything that's authentic and genuine, anything that grew out of any sense of tradition, is wiped out. We're left with this bland monoculture that's swept over the whole country.