"YOU HAVE TO BELIEVE WHEN YOU'RE DOING THESE FILMS THAT THE RIDE YOU'RE DOING IS THE BEST ONE OF THE SUMMER. If you go see the Rolling Stones play, you'd be disappointed if they didn't rock. You're gonna go and see a Bourne movie and it's gonna absolutely fucking rock."
"WHENEVER YOU MAKE A FILM YOU ALWAYS GET TO THE END OF IT AND GO, 'NOW I KNOW WHAT IT IS I WAS TRYING TO MAKE!' And you want to do it over again. Always. You look back at your early films and say, 'If I knew then what I know now, I'd be able to make that film.'"
"CINEMA'S NOT HISTORY, IT'S NOT JOURNALISM, IT'S NOT LAW. What it does is immerse you in the experience - it can convey what it looked like and make you feel what it felt like to be there."
"MATT DAMON HAS THAT THING GREAT ACTORS HAVE: they can draw the world into them. The great, great footballers have it, too. Zidane would get the ball and just be seemingly able to stop time."
"I WANTED UNITED 93 TO BE A FILM ABOUT THE WHOLE OF 9/11 BECAUSE WHEREVER YOU EXIST ON THE POLITICAL SPECTRUM, I THINK WE ALL AGREE THAT IT WAS A SEISMIC MOMENT. And, by that quirk of fate, the people in that plane were the first people in our world, the post 9/11 world, and they faced our choice, which is the, 'What are we going to do?' choice. But if you actually looked at it dispassionately, it was a very interesting prism through which to view our world today."
"THE VERY BIZARRE THING ABOUT BEING A DIRECTOR IS THAT YOU NEVER SEE OTHER DIRECTORS AT WORK. I'd love to see Martin Scorsese work. I'd love to see Ken Loach working because he's my hero. I would have loved, loved, loved to have seen Alan Clarke work. But equally, I'd love to watch young and new directors working because it's always interesting as they have totally different perspectives."
"BY THE TIME I'D DONE BLOODY SUNDAY I FELT I'D REACHED THE END OF A CHAPTER. I could feel it. I wanted to try something new, something different. Then, to my amazement, Bloody Sunday won lots of theatrical prizes, the audience award at Sundance, and then, to my even greater amazement, I had the opportunity to make a film in Hollywood. I mean, you wouldn't think, looking at my films, 'Oh, there's a guy who's going to make films in Hollywood.'"
"SOME CRITICS I TAKE SERIOUSLY; A THOUGHTFUL REVIEW CAN BE VERY GOOD. I welcome what they do and think it's important what they do. It would be wrong if cinema was driven entirely by marketing departments. Movies are a powerful cultural force; they can project things far and wide, so I think it's important that there are counter-weighting opinions prepared to criticise. I suspect there's not enough of it."
"IT'S AN INTERPLAY BETWEEN STRUCTURE AND FREEDOM, ALL THE TIME. You've got to dare to get into the dangerous place between having a gut feeling for what's going on and not knowing what's going on - in that interesting territory is where the Bourne films are made."
"WHENEVER I'M MAKING A FILM I GET VERY ANNOYED WITH THE WRITER, WHICH IS GENERALLY ME. Then when I'm writing a film, I get very annoyed with the director - and that's generally me too!"
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