Louis B. Mayer’s arm around your shoulder meant his hand was closer to your throat.

—Jules Dassin

“I think all children experience filmmaking. When their parents buy them a birthday present of little characters, soliders, little men-when I was a kid it was cowboys-and the kid lies down on the shag rug on his stomach, holds the little figure up right by his eyes so it’s very realistic, and gets an angle on that solider, puts the other solider at arm’s length in the other hand, and goes, bang, bang, bang, bang!-that’s the beginning of filmmaking. We all started out as filmmakers. And I guess I never grew out of it.”

Hardly a single one of my films isn’t based on something that happened in my childhood.

—Steven Spielberg

I just knew that if you engaged the audience with a promise that something would develop, you were in business. If not, you had to contrive automatic ridiculousness continuously.

—George Stevens