Joe Carnahan Quotes

I think as a filmmaker and as a director, you shortchange yourself if you inhibit the ability of your actor to bring their own personal experiences to the characters.

As much as I love Antonioni films, I love the Three Stooges.

When you're spending $200 million on a movie, you need to make $400 million to break even. It's a spectacle.

There's a film that I wrote that I want to do called 'The Grey,' which is about a group of pipeline workers in Alaska flying back into civilization after being remote for a number of months. The 737 they're on goes down, and they begin to be hunted by a pack of rogue wolves.

'The Blacklist' was really right place, right time. I read the script and met with Jon Bokenkamp, John Eisendrath, John Fox and John Davis, and we just hit it off. They understood that I was not so much trying to adapt to television, but adapt a cinematic style to the things that we were gonna do.

I am fascinated by that notion of people are never as they seem. And that doesn't make them good or bad. It's just we don't ever really show ourselves if we don't have to.

I look at Las Vegas, and I see the absolute best of what we are as Americans, and I see the absolute worst, in the same city.

On 'State of Affairs,' we're going after some names that you wouldn't think would traditionally do TV. A show that shoots in Los Angeles is such a rare bird in hand that I think we're gonna have the pick of the litter.

If I was ever gonna remake a Peckinpah film, it would be 'Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia.' That's my favorite Peckinpah film.

To be honest, most of the time you leave the theater, and you're like, 'Well, that was nice, but where did I park?' It doesn't really stick with you.

If I can do a romantic comedy with women, that's Everest to me.

I always look for ... hopefully look for a challenge. And you're always looking for the next summit to hit. Even if it's a personal one. It needn't be some great sense of monumental ... It just has to be important to you and big enough and special enough and individual enough that you get up for it. And that can be anything.

I'm pretty rigorous about the drafts I turn in. I don't turn in something that's so ungodly they go, 'What the hell is this?'

I have a very warm feeling about Kickstarter 'cause I think it's the best of what we can be. It's people who actually help out our fellow artists. We actually kind of go into our pocket for something. It's very rare.

It's like I don't have any one genre, I guess. I think you'd be hard-pressed to get me into a rom-com, but who knows?

My hope, my real hope, is that whatever you hold in your heart, whatever you truly believe, and you've put your faith in, that that's what 's waiting for you. I think that'd be wonderful. You know what I mean? I think that would be the culmination of the life of the devout, or the believer.

'Raising Arizona' is maybe my favorite comedy of all time. What's great about it is that as slapstick as it gets, it has great moments of emotion and caring. Them bringing the baby back and Trey Wilson's character. I love that, man.

You can't stand at the Bellagio and watch these seven story fountains and not go, 'That's something of extraordinary man-made beauty.'

So much of Hollywood is this kind of overly machismo, nonsensical view of masculinity, which I just don't find honest. I think it's this idea of - you know, we're told, well, 'Be a man, be a man.' But what does that mean, exactly? Does that mean you can't carry yourself with any fear? That you can't acknowledge that you're scared?

With 'The A-Team,' it was like, 'Alright, I'm going to do a big popcorn movie and see how that feels.'

In TV, you can carve out a beautiful little niche like 'Breaking Bad' did. Like 'The Wire' did. Like 'Homeland' did.

I hope I can become a good enough filmmaker where I can take a script that I'm not 'heart and soul' into, but I could still make something really great out of it.

If 'The Blacklist' taught me anything, it was kind of open-ended intrigue and leaving questions unanswered. Creating this kind of mystery by virtue of depriving the audience of these easy answers was what I was kind of into.

I wish I'd made 'Warrior,' and I wish I'd made 'Drive.'

Think about a guy like Bob Mitchum, with his kind of chest gut not defining itself one way or the other. Was there anybody tougher? Lee Marvin was a marine sniper during the Second World War. They had this sense of themselves, and they had this product of being a man in a masculine way.

I can never kind of fathom a character's journey beyond the moment when you go to black, any more than when people ask me what Jason Patric did with the tape recorder at the end of 'Narc,' you know what I mean? Even in 'Blood, Guts,' like, what happens down the road with these characters?

I was not a gigantic fan of 'The A-Team' as a kid. I was a huge 'Miami Vice' fan. So for me, not necessarily to say that I put a 'Miami Vice'ish spin on 'The A-Team,' but for me, what I was most intrigued by was this notion of these four guys, these four kind of special operators.

I guess I much prefer the path of the contrarian: the guy who goes against the grain a bit. The careers of the people who I admire deeply - like the Coen brothers and Soderbergh - don't repeat themselves, and they make radically different films at times, and I think that's wonderful.

I don't conduct my career for when I'm dead and people say nice things about me. I conduct my career for the here and now, and what excites me, and what interests me.

To me, still my favorite 3D film is 'Dial M for Murder.' I thought that was great. Hitchcock used it, could put you in the room, which I thought was fantastic, but I'm still not a devotee of 3D.

'Killing Pablo' to me - as much as I love 'The Grey's script - 'Killing Pablo' to me is the best thing I've ever written.

I did a pilot for Fox years ago called 'Faceless,' with Sean Bean. I always thought it was such a cool show because it was really raw. I thought we were pushing it. This was back at a time before there was the 'cable standard.'