Jean-Pierre Jeunet famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

I like looking back at people's faces in the dark. I like noticing details that no one else sees. But I hate it in the old American movies when drivers don't watch the road.
-- Jean-Pierre Jeunet

#Hate #Dark #People
It's always more interesting and more difficult to make something positive than negative. To be negative is very easy.
-- Jean-Pierre Jeunet

#Interesting #Negative #Easy
I like the cinema of people like Terry Gilliam and Tim Burton. I am not keen on trying to reproduce reality - for that you should do documentaries.
-- Jean-Pierre Jeunet

#Reality #People #Trying
When I was a kid, I used to escape from my family with my imagination, and I kept this spirit into my adult life. This doesn't always happen. All children have imagination, but for some it doesn't carry over.
-- Jean-Pierre Jeunet

#Children #Kids #Imagination
For me, the most important word in cinema is the word freedom. For example, in Europe, we've got freedom, we've got the final cut and that's something which is marvellous.
-- Jean-Pierre Jeunet

#Cutting #Europe #Important
I believe in imagination. I was a worker when I was 17. Between 17 and 21, I was a worker in the telephone company and imagination saved my life.
-- Jean-Pierre Jeunet

#Believe #Imagination #Telephones
All day my mind drifts off into fantasies and little stupid jokes.
-- Jean-Pierre Jeunet

#Stupid #Mind #Littles
When you make something you like and audiences reject it, the experience can be painful. But I've discovered...that when you make something you aren't exactly satisfied with, and someone tells you it's great, that's even mor...e painful and frustrating.
-- Jean-Pierre Jeunet

#Painful #Frustrating #Satisfied
In general, I have some precise ideas about everything, because the film is completed in my head before we ever start shooting. With casting, I am always present, even for the smallest character.
-- Jean-Pierre Jeunet

#Character #Ideas #Shooting
In the States, I learned to fight for every idea. Sometimes, a director has to be a tyrant to keep the quality.
-- Jean-Pierre Jeunet

#Fighting #Tyrants #Ideas
When you speak about generosity, about something good we have inside ourselves, you're speaking to the majority.
-- Jean-Pierre Jeunet

#Generosity #Majority #Speak
If I would want to have a huge audience, I would make American movies, not French movies, because there is a limit of course with French language. If I prefer to shoot in my own language, it is to play with my language, to play in my Paris, and I have complete freedom in France. It's so amazing. If American directors could imagine how free I am, they would have asked for political asylum immediately.
-- Jean-Pierre Jeunet

#Play #Paris #Political
It's always been pretty easy for me to exercise my imagination. The other part of the brain, the one that does mathematics, is a nightmare for me. It doesn't work at all.
-- Jean-Pierre Jeunet

#Exercise #Imagination #Brain
I think we're entering a new period of filmmaking that's analogous to switching from black-and-white to color, or from silent to sound. The medium is completely flexible, and it's not bound by anything. If you imagine something, you can do it.
-- Jean-Pierre Jeunet

#Black And White #Thinking #Color
If you make the right choice in casting, your work is nearly done already. You don't have to spend a lot of time directing the actors, because they're so well suited to the parts.
-- Jean-Pierre Jeunet

#Choices #Actors #Done
When I was a child, I had a ViewMaster, those red box glasses with little discs, so that you can see 3D images. They were my first steps in cinema. I was eight years old, I would cut and change the order of the images and that's how I created films that subsequently I recorded and projected and showed my friends. So I already took my first steps in 3D when I was eight years old.
-- Jean-Pierre Jeunet

#Children #Cutting #Glasses
I've never made any concessions, so I am 100% responsible for my films. This makes me feel very proud.
-- Jean-Pierre Jeunet

#Proud #Film #Responsible
I thought all I had to do was to buy a camera and become a film director. So when I left school I worked at a telephone company, which gave me the money to buy the basic equipment including the camera, the projector and the screen.
-- Jean-Pierre Jeunet

#School #Cameras #Directors
I think of a film as being like a toy train.
-- Jean-Pierre Jeunet

#Thinking #Toys #Film
In France, I am so free. I have more freedom than most American directors could dare to even imagine.
-- Jean-Pierre Jeunet

#Directors #France #Imagine
Each time, I try to find a family of interesting faces. I follow the tradition of films from the 40s - at this time, there were so many interesting faces in France. I often work with the same because there are not thousands and thousands in France. I'm looking for interesting faces and characters actors, and it's not for everybody.
-- Jean-Pierre Jeunet

#Character #Interesting #Trying
In France, it's very suspect when you have a success.
-- Jean-Pierre Jeunet

#France #Suspects
This is one of the things I don't like so much about French cinema - we have tendency to concentrate on actors and dialogue and we don't care so much about the visual aspect. I love when you use all the elements at your disposal.
-- Jean-Pierre Jeunet

#Cinema #Use #Actors
I love science fiction but I don't like fantastic [cinema]. For example, if you have a magical ring and you can explode the world with it. What are we talking about? You know, it's not interesting. I don't like Lord of the Rings. Even Star Wars, for me, I don't understand this kind of story. But Alien, because the rules of the game are very precise, it could happen. I love science fiction. I have an idea about robots in the future.
-- Jean-Pierre Jeunet

#Stars #War #Talking
There is a new philosophy for weapons: it's more expensive to hurt people than to kill people. It's terrible. When you have a band of guys on the battlefield, if someone is dead, he's dead. If someone is injured then they have to take care of him, so six people are busy.
-- Jean-Pierre Jeunet

#Hurt #Philosophy #People

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