Allison Anders Quotes

Roman Polanski is one of my favorite filmmakers, and John Phillips one of my favorite songwriters. I had the honor to meet each of these men and was almost giddy to be blessed with the chance to tell each artist what his work meant has to me.

You still get the movies made. A filmmaker can always scrape up money to do a movie. The passion drives it. And you'll get the money. Money's the easiest thing. But the hardest thing is finding a way for people to see your movie.

While we can work hard at improving our health, size is no more in our control than the color of our skin, our ethnicity, or our sexual preference.

Let's face it - no matter how independent you are, you still have this nagging need to be desired.

This practice of skinny actresses donning fat suits is essentially the new and acceptable blackface in Hollywood.

I hope the next actress offered millions to play the 'fat girl for the day' stops to think about this before she signs the contract - even if just to ask, like any professional actress would in any other situation, 'Why does she weigh 350 pounds? And why me for the part?' If the director can't answer these questions, don't do the movie.

Movies can tell us about our place, or lack of place, in our culture.

I've worked on movies where there's all these people coming and going, and I don't even know who they are.

When 'Gas Food Lodging' was released, I had already shot 'Mi Vida Loca.'

In the early '90s when the American independent movie started, it held personal vision as a premium. That was brilliant timing.

Art should never be held above our decency to each other.

Sundance is the only hand that feeds for women directors.

The women I cast have to embody all sorts of contradictions ... I have to find the right woman to speak to other women.

When you're traumatized, you pick out one thing you remember more than anything else.

I've been amazed watching people who are not ready with their scripts when they're getting a lot of attention.

Unless it's something very clever like 'Memento,' most independent films have a very tough life out there.

I'd be just as happy being a midwife. That's my ideal job.

I love showing off my tattoos.

There's never been a 'girl wonder' mythology.

I was a big fan of X. I've probably seen 100 X shows during their time in the late '70s and early '80s.

For me, the most exciting thing is that Jane Campion is a woman we can all really look up to. She doesn't have the body of work that some other directors do - no woman director does - but her work is so consistently original, wonderful, masterful.

I don't know that movies are important. But I know that stories are important. Movies may disappear. They've only been around, for God's sake, for the last hundred years ... I think that it's the need to tell stories, and that people need to be told stories. It's the old sitting around the fire, you know.

Trauma creates one of four types of people: victims, rescuers, or perps - and if you're really lucky and really strong and very willing and brave, survivors.

Because I came from the working class, I still identify with them. I don't identify with the middle class.

There's a persona that musicians carry with them. I like to find what's under the persona.

When I wanted to become a filmmaker, there was nobody for me to look up to.

I don't believe you ever get closure on anything. Things leave a permanent mark on you.

Before, I just don't think we knew how much music was out there; now with MySpace, it's really opened it up. Filmmakers have so much more choice.

Maybe women sometimes wish that a man would come along and buy them.