Antoine Fuqua Quotes

It's a dumb question, because I don't look at things as a black director, just as a director, so ask me as a director first and we can segue into the colour thing later.

Some men don't gel when it comes to work - you have different work ethics, different opinions, different points of views, different methods of filmmaking - and we didn't gel.

Being a kid growing up with Kurosawa films and watching Sergio Leone movies just made me love what it could do to you, and how it could influence you - make you dream.

Cinema Paradiso, because it reminds me of why I make movies, the magic of movies, the romance of movies.

I like being in real environments. I love being in the place that it's about - these sets and locations are characters in the movies. Can you imagine Breakfast at Tiffany's shot somewhere else? It's classic. Characters are part of storytelling; they're just as important as everything else.

I'm a product of older filmmakers I guess, the past where you get to make movies and scenes are what they are. You know if you think about Scorsese back in the day when he was making Taxi Driver, or Coppola or Frankenheimer, Sidney Lumet, they're making films where you witness violence in a real way.

So it's hard to be an artist and be true to the reality of the world you want to create and also make it entertaining and successful financially.

Bruce Willis. Pain in my ass, no problem about that. We just didn't get along. We got along off camera, but shooting we just didn't get along.

I like the platform to show your art and everything that goes along with that. To show your voice and hopefully find films that are more politically driven, films that maybe inspire.

I don't think I've seen that sort of character in a long time in this genre because again, there was a time when you could have quirky, strange characters that you grew to love, you didn't quite understand, you know, and then all of a sudden they became almost cardboard cutouts for awhile. You kind of know the guy, what his deal is - this guy's hard to figure out. He has some strange habits, but, you learn to love him and you discover more about him, where it comes from.

I just think you can't shut your life off to just, you know, one thing. You gotta be open-minded. Explore things. Feed your artist.

It's a hard line to walk, man. Cause you know you want to make this movie, you want to make it dark and real, you want to show all this stuff but unfortunately you can't always do that.

It's not worth it, it's not about money, especially when you're dealing with a culture. It should be about elevating the idea of what we are and who we are as people in the cinema, and that kind of stuff keeps dragging us back down.

You'll see a consistent, like the tea, the tea bags you saw there-you'll see a consistent-did you see the cafeteria? I mean the diner?

What I learned is, don't forget who you are, because that's what's going to make you a filmmaker.

OCD, we discovered is a lot of different things-it's not just washing your hands, it's whatever you're obsessed with. It can be just the way you hold a pen, and you always have to have it a certain way or you have to eat your food, it depends. It's something that, as a character I thought was really interesting because sometimes it's used in a film where it is OCD and sometimes it's strategic.

I like the opportunity to make films.

I like making movies.

I've become friends with Michael Mann and Oliver Stone; I've seen those guys work and that was great to see.

Well, we studied a lot of books and things like that. Denzel has a personal experience with it, not himself, that's his business-I won't get into that, but he knows a lot about it as well. So, we took some real life experiences that we both-I've been told that I have OCD.

My experience of test screenings is that you don't know what kind of mood people are going to be in, and sometimes the studios accept what Joe Blo says - and this guy could just be a frustrated filmmaker, or not paying attention.

I only pay to take my son to the movies, because most of the time I only watch European movies, independent movies, or screen them privately. But I like to go to movies with my son because it's still fun; it reminds me of why I make movies.

I believe in God, absolutely.

Well, I mean, the original is certainly the jump-off, it certainly is what it is, you know, I grew up around that era so I watched all those shows. The basic concept is there, it's just a different movie. Totally different actors, different filmmakers, different script, but same concept.

I started studying mythology, just on my own. Joseph Campbell, mysticism.

The violence you witness is Denzel doing it and we're taking some visual effects and doing some things and you see something happen it's happening in front of you as opposed to cutting away and doing a bunch of tricks. It's in front of you. So it's hard not to make it a hard "R" if you see a guy get punched and teeth wind up in someone's knuckles.

In movies you get to do that. Sometimes with the vigilante justice movie he has to also tangle with police, which are traditional or security people. Is there going to be any of that in this?

The outsider hero is hero riding into town, he's the gunslinger, shame - the same thing, he didn't want to do it anymore, he wanted to live a different life but part of who you are sort of haunts you and you can't run away from evil and if you have special skills, and most people are mistreated, which is unfortunately in our world, we always need an equalizer, that type of character to come to our rescue.

One hundred percent, I mean, many of the Sergio Leone movies were with Clint Eastwood, and that's what it is.

You could call it that [urban Western], I guess, you could certainly call it that. A lot of these types of films are, really, if you get down to the core most suspense thrillers in this genre, the Western is sort of the birth of it all.

How do you capture the drama of a Rembrandt painting in a movie? How do you feel that moment that they captured in two hours? I kind of fell into it and at one point, I decided I wanted to live an art life; I wanted to tell stories. I came to New York, and did what most people do - you become a PA and run and get coffee and pay your dues and learn until your opportunity comes.

There are many stories of people didn't set out to make a film that became a classic - the whole process was a disaster, everybody hated each other, the movie itself was a disaster, everybody thought the movie and the script was going to be a piece of crap. Look at Alfred Hitchcock and Psycho. Nobody wanted to make Psycho; it was crap to them. The only person that wanted to make Psycho was Hitchcock. Now, it's considered a classic and a work of art.

I'm a product of older filmmakers I guess, the past where you get to make movies and scenes are what they are.

Movies are so hard to get made - every step of the way of making a movie has obstacles. If you don't have that passion, if you don't have that vision, if you don't believe it's a piece of art worth making, then you probably won't get it made - you won't have a chance for it to be something special.

You want to take yourself seriously, and you want to make something that you hope will have resonance with the audience. You want to bring your perspective and what you consider your talent to that piece of work, and you move forward in that direction. Sometimes that's easy, and sometimes it's met with resistance because you're dealing with situations where, for everybody else, it's a piece of business.

I think people go to the movies to be entertained, to have an experience, to disappear from their own reality for a couple of hours. If the film truly succeeds in everything the filmmaker sets out for it to be, then it's elevated to art. It's elevated to something special, because it gives people a visceral feeling of something they're experiencing as a collective group. You feel something and that's what turns it into what you may call art.

I don't think the audience goes and thinks of the movie as a piece of art - there are some independent people who may go and have a higher appreciation for filmmaking. It is a great art form, but I don't think you look at a painting and a movie with the same eye.

Not harder than it should be, no. We're about the business, we're about the work. It's all about the work, always. We have fun and laugh and there're days that are more intense than others, but we're there to make it better. He's always going to try and make it better, I'm always going to try and make it better. So you accept anything, you accept whatever it takes to get it up on the screen and make it worthy.

If I'm going to see my mom, I'm going to church!

Tupac Shakur is something that, of course I want to make the Tupac movie, I love Tupac, but when that movie was announced, we didn't even have a script yet. It was just being written. People announce things too soon. If you go to any filmmaker - Clint Eastwood, Oliver Stone, Martin Scorsese, Ben Affleck, Michael Mann - you go in their offices and there are scripts everywhere and there's about four or five of them you really want to make.

I love movies; I grew up loving movies. I've always loved movies. I never thought about making movies until I took art classes and then I started studying different artists. As you study paintings, you see light and shadow, of course - Rembrandt, Eugène Delacroix. You start to understand the relationship between people and art, and images. For me, between movies that I watched and art, it was like, I'd love to make moving art. Moving pictures.

I would be lying to you if I said I wouldn't love for it [Equalizer] to become a franchise, I would love for it to become a hit and all that great stuff. Who knows-you just make the best movie you can make, you know it's like, eat the whole thing, one piece at a time. And then, we'll see what happens, I would love for it to be.

It's part of the film-making business and also part of the creative process - putting all the pieces together to make a movie, so that they all line up. Sometimes it looks like you have a lot of projects lined up, but some of them are in different stages.

Sometimes violence in a very real way is much faster and more impactful because it feels real and you're watching it happen and you're watching your star do these things, so it's not like he's doing superhero moves.

If you see someone lying out knives and forks consistently, but then one day those knives and forks become weapons you're not sure if he does that as a warrior, that's just his thing.

We're very good friends, we have a very honest relationship. He keeps me honest, I keep him honest. He's an incredible actor and when you have an actor like Denzel action becomes drama.

Even the Westerns that I grew up with, the Sergio Leone's and all that, there was always a sort of anti-hero, a guy reluctant to shame even, to pick up the gun again because he wants to help other people, and he does, he uses his skills for that.

You'll see in the movie he constantly does that-he only drinks his tea a certain way, brings his own tea bags, the guy pours hot water, it's like a consistency throughout the film, but he never breaks his habits. I mean, to a point, where he has to.

I became a director just for the love of movies, because of the power of cinema.

I'd seen too many shrines in South Central and thought it was worth asking where the first bullet came from that started all this violence.