Andrew Dominik Quotes

I imagine that in a closed, hermetic society like the mob, where everybody knows each other, it must be really, really unpleasant to have to kill people. It's the sort of thing you really want to avoid.

America's moved so much of its production and manufacturing offshore, it's become a nation of middlemen.

I always feel that crime films are about capitalism because it is a genre where it is perfectly acceptable for all the characters to be motivated by the desire for money. In some ways, the crime film is the most honest American film because it portrays Americans as I experience a lot of them, in Hollywood, as being very concerned with money.

The crime film is the most honest American film.

Sometimes you do complete run-throughs of scenes, sometimes you break scenes down into little bits. It just depends on what the actors like to do. It's almost like jamming.

Actors have either got to play something that's close to them, or something that's the complete opposite.

I like test screenings. I like to see a movie with an audience of strangers. I think it tells you a lot.

I really believed Obama when he spoke in 2008, but I remember watching his victory speech after this last election and it was the same speech. Exactly the same speech. I felt like he didn't even believe it anymore. He seemed to be tired of saying the same thing.

It always surprises me in films that killers seem so gleeful about killing people.

Jesse James is like a Leonard Cohen song, I wanted to do something that was like a pop song.

As a filmmaker, it's important to sit there and feel embarrassed. If you feel embarrassed by something, you cut it.

When men organize themselves into groups, and they make rules based on common or self-interest, it's always tangled and political.

I'm from the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" school of screenwriting. I just like to preserve what works and ignore what doesn't work.

The fantasy gives you the courage to feel things.

Once you do something violent in a film, you don't have to do too much. You do it once and the feeling of violence just stays there, do you know what I'm saying?

I'm not a very efficient filmmaker. There's a lot of guys, filmmakers like the Coen Brothers who shoot a whole movie and maybe don't use 12 setups. I'm in awe of people like that; I'm just not that guy.

I write a number of screenplays, and I've never really come up with a part for a movie star.

I like violence to be upsetting. The only reason to do it subtley is if doing it subtley makes it more effective somehow.

Sometimes you see a movie and you can really feel that it's an actor putting in a performance. Someone said 'cut' and they're back in their trailer having a coffee or getting their hair done.

I read books all the time. I'm just half looking for something to do; I mostly just read for pleasure. Occasionally I stumble across something that could be a movie, but I don't put a book down just because I don't see a movie in it, either.

I don't think human beings have changed in 2,000 years.

For me, the movie's always evolving as I'm doing it. I throw things in as we shoot, and I take things out as we go. I want to create a whole life and then select the pieces that best sort of describe it later, you know? So there's a lot of wastage when I make a film.

Crime is a job and it's boring. It's also unpleasant.

Everybody is always trying to make the best movie they can. It's a process.

Actors look for characters. If they read a well-written character, and if they think the director's not an idiot, they're going to sign up and do some acting.

Americans are not renowned for having a sense of irony.

It seems like women don't want men to be men anymore. They want men to be women. But they really don't want what they say they want. It's very weird.

In Australia, we point out a person's weaknesses as a way of saying 'I see you and I accept you'. If you do that with Americans, they instantly take offence.