Quotes

Film is a battleground. Love, hate, violence, action, death . . . In a word, emotion.

Am I a cult director? Yeah, I love all that. I want to join the cult of the $100- to $200-million grossers and still make an artistic picture.

Ninety-five per cent of films are born of frustration, of self-despair, of ambition for survival, for money, for fattening bank accounts. Five per cent, maybe less, are made because a man has an idea, an idea which he must express.

[Vincent van Gogh] was a great inspiration for me, a guy for whom life was work and work was life. I wanted to be like him, except I didn't want to go nuts and cut off my ear.

I hate violence. That has never prevented me from using it in my films.

[Fuller, a WW II combat veteran, writing to director Lewis Milestone--himself a World War I combat veteran--expressing his displeasure at what he considered the phony heroics of Milestone's A Walk in the Sun (1945)] Why a man of your calibre should resort to a colonel's technical advice [the film's technical advisor was a US Army colonel] on what happens in a platoon is something I'll never figure out . . . When colonels are back in their garrison hutments where they belong I'll come out with a yarn that won't make any doggie that was ever on the line retch with disgust.

[about Run of the Arrow (1957)] The Confederate in that scene who sang the song against the Constitution was played by a Southerner, whose hobby was collecting folklore and ballads. He loved it, being a Southerner and against the damn Yankees. My art director on the picture was a very virulent Yankee. I'm only telling you this because there's an evil streak in me that I like. I thought it would be wonderful to get them together in my office. I'll never forget it; it was the most wonderful moment of my life to introduce these two men who despised each other. They immediately got into a tremendous argument. I heard the whole Civil War fought all over again in my office.

I grew up believing that people make things move, like the word "movie". The world, like a moving picture, was moving forward. I wanted to advance, too, as rapidly as my quick mind and fast legs would carry me. I also grew up believing in truth--not just the word itself, but the deeper conviction that getting to the truth was a noble cause. My nature has always been to tell people the truth, even if they feel insulted. I care too much about people to bullshit them. If they're offended by the truth, why waste my time on them? When a young director comes to me for advice on a script, I don't pull any punches, especially if the thing's overwritten.

I write with the camera. It is my typewriter.

The only way to bring the real experience of war to a movie audience is by firing a machine gun above their heads during the screening.