Brett Ratner Quotes

There's no greater feeling than people coming up to me and going, "Man, my father was dying, and we went to see Rush Hour, and it was the greatest night we had in years together. We sat in that theater and we laughed for two hours without stopping. That was just a great memory that I had before my father died."

Would it be nice to win a film award one day? Yes. But the critics are going to have to wait till I'm ready. Right now, my gift is making big movies that audiences want to see.

I learn more from the audience than I can from anybody else. Not from what they write on the scorecards, but how they respond to the movie while they're watching it - where they laugh and where they react.

When you're the director, you kinda do all the work.

I'd want to marry Cate Blanchett, date Kate Bosworth, and spend the weekend with Elisha Cuthbert.

There's no difference between a tacky Jew from Miami and a rap star. They both want the Cadillac and the Rolex with the diamonds.

People can criticise all day long, I think I've proven myself, I think I deliver. And I agree, box office does not mean a movie's good, but I feel like I'm making good movies and I'm delivering in box office.

I look for stuff that I'm passionate about.

I'm trying to be a little bit more mature about my choices and think about what I want to direct next, instead of just jumping into a movie 'cause I want to do it.

Having love in your heart doesn't count for much if what comes out of your mouth is ugly and bigoted.

Do I have a small movie in me? Yeah, probably, when I'm 60. But I'm not Hal Ashby, I'm not Roman Polanski. I'm true to myself. Whether you like it or not.

In this day and age, you need a lot of patience if you are in the movie business.

Listening is harder than just acting. Listening is the hardest part.

I learn from every movie I do because on every movie I have a different experience.

Michael Jackson doesn't really belong on this planet. He's the most important figure in the history of music. He'll be remembered far longer than George Bush will. 200 years from now, people will be talking about Michael Jackson, and no one's going to mention George Bush.

'Vacation' means titillating my taste buds.

Rehearsal? What's that? Rehearsal's for fags. Rehearsal. Not much.

I've worked with a hundred of the biggest artists in the world, from Madonna to Mariah Carey, and Michael Jackson is just beyond. He's at a whole other level, spiritually. He's got the God spot. Everyone has it, everyone has that God spot, but it's just the way he's in tune with it. He has it. It's right there, and when he starts to sing, God has just opened it up for him. That's why he's not comfortable around people and things, because he's just such a unique - he feels blessed just to be himself. "I can't believe I'm Michael Jackson."

In my public life, I'm just a guy who enjoys having fun.

Everyone who knows me knows that I don't have a prejudiced bone in my body.

I don't have any regrets.

I'm not going to turn down an Oscar, but I'm not strategizing for one.

I personally can watch an eight-hour documentary on Woody Allen because I'm fascinated by him. But, an audience can't really sit through more than two and a half hours on any movie. It doesn't matter if Marlon Brando came back from the dead. It's just impossible.

I fear God and respect God and love God.

I think taking the biggest star in India and the biggest star in America, and putting them together in a movie that starts in America and ends up in India, or starts in India and goes to America. I think it would be a buddy cop formula.

Woody Allen is in his '70s and he's making movies, so I look forward to getting there.

I'm constantly being visually stimulated.

My movies are pretty tight and they're pretty well-paced. I'm not one to make long movies. I don't dwell on stuff.

I've been a book collector since I was young, since I was a kid.

I love everything black, because black is cool. When something crosses over, people are like, "Oh, this is a crossover." First of all, there is no urban anymore. Pop culture is black. White kids are dressing like black kids. It's all crossed the lines now. The way I understand it is, everything black is cool. When it crosses over to white, that means it's going from cool to uncool. That's what crossover is.

When I do short films, I try to do something completely out of my comfort zone, out of my element.

Movies are the biggest export in the world, the biggest American export. It influences people all over the world.

You can't reinvent the wheel. You've got to just take the best from all the other shows and try to make it work, because there's the "live show Gods" that dictate if there are going to be any surprises, if there's a very commercial film that's a Best Picture. There are a lot of things that are out of my control, but I do my best.

I'm a hypochondriac. Before I go all the way, I send the girl to the doctor and check them for everything. My doctor has a test to tell if you're going to catch something in the future even.

You've got to think about how to do things for the right price. You have to shoot in different places to be creative and get tax rebates.

I want to print books by people in the film industry.

I want people to see my movies. My talent, my sensibilities are what people want to see in the movies. While I have the talent to make the kind of movies people want to see I want to continue to do that, keep making big pictures and make what I love. I'm really just making the films I want to see. There's not a strategy.

They say your childhood influences your tastes and interests, or your approach if you're an artist. So what you create, whatever you saw, whatever your childhood was like - it influences how you're going to end up.

When I was 13, Eddie Murphy was to me what Chris Tucker was to 13-year-olds when I made 'Rush Hour.' And 'Rush Hour' really came out of the fact that I grew up watching 'Beverly Hills Cop' and '48 Hrs.'

I did New York, I Love You which is a very personal film for me. My most personal film, but it's not like a film I've ever made. I would never do that film as a feature, for instance, because it's not very commercial of an idea.

I'm not invited to the Vanity Fair dinner where they watch the Oscars - or even the Oscars themselves - so I sit at home and watch it with a bunch of close friends.

At the end of the day, audiences just want to laugh and be entertained. They want to escape from their reality, and that's why we make movies, to get people to escape from the realities.

Whoever writes a bad review, I put their name on a list, and they're going to get taken care of one day down the road. Otherwise, I don't let it bother me. The truth is, these are review-proof movies. The audiences are going to see it. My audience, our audience, isn't reading Esquire magazine to see if my movie is good or not. They just want to laugh, to be entertained, and lose themselves.