John Boorman Quotes

What is passion? Passion is surely the becoming of a person.

I'm trying to suggest a kind of Middle Earth, in Tolkien terms. It's a contiguous world; it's like ours but different.

I was in Japan, and my assistant director had worked with Kurosawa. I used quite of number of Kurosawa's crew.

Up until the middle to late '60s, it was a choice to film in black-and-white or color. But then television became so vital to a film's finance, and television won't show black-and-white. So that killed it off, really.

There are always forces at work in a society, which are really forces of censorship - either religious bodies or zealots who are always putting pressure on things, whether it's books or art or film.

I love green. Green is the color of nature, trees. I'm a tree freak. I spend a lot of my time planting trees, nurturing them, and studying them. It's one of the colors I couldn't live without.

It's so easy to manipulate an audience, but it's nearly always clear that you are being manipulated. I think even people that are not critically attuned are aware of cynical manipulation in film.

The resistance to [black-and-white] is huge, in the way that you have to sell the film. It's difficult to distribute around the world.

I look at the story, I look at the idea and just try to think of it in terms of that whole body of myth and see where the characters fit in and what they ought to be doing-all those archetypes are there to play with.

What we need is someone to abolish the House Of Lords, get rid of the Royal Family ...

All art is fundamentally subversive, because it upsets people's perceptions, their notions about society. Therefore, art is dangerous, but good art is always making us reassess our thoughts and feelings about how we relate to other people. There are always people who fear that and want to suppress that.

All the great legends are Templates for human behavior. I would define a myth as a story that has survived.

I only storyboard scenes that require special effects, where it is necessary to communicate through pictures.

Black-and-white gives you that sort of parallel world. Also, it's very close to the condition of dreaming, to the unconscious.

Black and white is much closer to the condition of
dreaming. It links you to the subconscious and I think that was
part of the great appeal of movies originally.. this strange otherness.

When actors are being defensive and defending their position, that is when you get less than good acting.