Quotes

[on Time After Time (1979)] One of my original conceptual things about the Ripper was that of an exceedingly handsome, elegant man. Wells, next to him, was a runt who wore glasses, and so forth. The Ripper had an image of tremendous power and potency, not just as a menace, but as an attractive, seductive human being. What was it that women went for him?

[on the difference between an actor and a movie star] An actor is someone who pretends to be somebody else. A movie star is somebody who pretends that somebody else is them. Actors will change their face, will change their hair, will change their voice, will disappear into the role. A movie star doesn't disappear.

[on the Star Trek villains] The best villains are the ones that you can understand. And the really great villains are the ones that you root for. One of us is gonna live and one of us is gonna die. And it doesn't really matter what anyone's motives are at that point. It's just Darwin.

Without fans -- fans of anything! -- art doesn't survive. If Shakespeare didn't have fans, there's be no endless productions of his plays. Ditto Renoir, Homer, and everyone else. Robert Bresson said, "My job is not to find out what the public wants and give it to them; my job is to make the public want what I want."

Once you throw it to the public, artists really lose all proprietary ownership of their work. Artists are people who put a message in a bottle and hope someone finds it. Artists are like Moses stuck on the wrong side of the River Jordan for 40 years. Artists are seldom, if ever, the best judges of their own work. Myself included.

The Day After (1983) was intended to be upsetting. I should remark that there are more upsetting movies about nuclear war than 'The Day After'. There's a movie called Threads (1984), and there was a Peter Watkins movie called The War Game (1966) that they wouldn't even put on British TV. So, it has to sort of take its place alongside these very depressing speculative accounts about nuclear war.

[When asked if he had nuclear nightmares from the making of The Day After (1983)] No. I have other nightmares. I have not had what my actors used to get while we were shooting the movie, which we called nukemares. Steve Guttenberg had nukemares. I never had one.

[In 2023] I've tried over the last couple of years intermittently trying to get a new version of [The Day After (1983)] made. A global version. And I've been to all the streamers. And nobody wants to do it now any more than they wanted to do it then.