I want people to leave the cinema feeling that something's been confirmed for them about life.
— Danny Boyle
Come a crisis, we want other people.
I'm not a 'Star Wars' geek.
One of Dickens' biggest influences was the growth of London as a Victorian city, and the extremes being created as it expanded.
Movies about space raise those questions of what we're doing here, and that inevitably introduces a spiritual dimension.
That survival instinct, that will to live, that need to get back to life again, is more powerful than any consideration of taste, decency, politeness, manners, civility. Anything. It's such a powerful force.
I haven't got anything against films that are about the minutia of relationships or customs, but I love extremes.
If you have to be persuaded about something, you shouldn't do it.
You can't tell someone they are wrong about their own life.
I always think, when there's stuff that people don't like, I always say that if I have another success, I'll enjoy it more, but you don't really.
I've never done a film before where every single person in the audience knows the ending. I mean suspense, twists are almost impossible these days. People are blogging your endings from their cinema seats.
People say you never remember anybody who dies in movies, and it's true, you don't. You don't even remember people who disappear.
There's lots of things that can be solved with cash.
It's not so much what you learn about Mumbai, it's what you learn about yourself, really. It's a funny old hippie thing, but it's true as well. You find out a lot about yourself and your tolerance, and about your inclusiveness.
I'd love to do a modern-day musical that's full of original music. To get your contemporaries to sing and dance without looking foolish and for it to be transformational and magical and all those things a musical is supposed to be.
I always say to anybody who's going over to America for the first time, 'Whatever you do, go and see a popular mainstream film with a big audience.' Because people shout out. You never get that in Britain. Everybody's so quiet, scared to laugh. It's like being in church.
Actors want to impress at the beginning, so you take advantage of that by suddenly saying, 'Right, you're here for two weeks.' What you're doing is creating a siege mentality.
You don't realize it, but often people are frightened of the director.
I mean suspense, twists are almost impossible these days.
I love that sense of change that you'd get in pop music every three minutes, every four minutes.
I made this film 'The Beach,' which didn't take place in a city, and it didn't really suit me.
I don't want people to sit there and objectively watch the film. I want them to experience it as something that's under their skin, so you try to make the films really tactile.
I find that people find a way out of misery through humor and it's humor that's often unacceptable to people who are not in quite such a state of misery.
Although computer chips now are thinner, they're more powerful, they're not as reliable. You'd harvest computer chips from the 1980s from all around the world because they're reliable.
Some of us are interested in directors, but really the vast majority of us are interested in actors. You experience the films through the actors, so they're all locked into your imagination in some kind of layer of fantasy or hatred or wherever they settle into your imagination.
You can have great sequences with music, but if you don't have the acting you're bored after 15 minutes. Or not bored, but you're like, 'So what?'
The problem with being British... I don't know if it's me being British or being raised a strict Catholic, but you never really enjoy success.
As soon as you think you can do whatever you want and you have whatever great professional in the world waiting to work with you, then you are sunk.
I tend to score with songs from Western pop music.
I'd love to do a cop film in America. That's a genre I absolutely adore.
The extraordinary thing about India is that it's such a family place. It's full of families everywhere.
I'm a big sports fan. Football. Cricket.
A lot of film directors are quite scared of actors. They are a bit of a nightmare sometimes, but I like them. It looks like cunning, but you try to get extra things from them all the time, by stealth, by making them feel confident, so they trust you and you can push a bit.
I am a sci-fi fan.
You experience the films through the actors, so they're all locked into your imagination in some kind of layer of fantasy or hatred or wherever they settle into your imagination.
Brian Cox is the nicest guy, but he's so arrogant.
Originally I'm a big pop-music aficionado, that's my love.
I love cities.
I have this theory that your first film is always your best film in some way. I always try to get back to that moment when you're not relying on things you've done before.
I like action movies, even though I think action movies are kind of derided now. But there is something extraordinary about action movies, which is absolutely linked to the invention of cinema and what cinema is and why we love it.
When they're good, there is nothing like a big film.
If you love a book you tend not to follow its surface value, you follow the other things in it.
The great thing with film is that it doesn't have an ego. It's just a film. Everybody that makes them has an ego, and the problem with awards and stuff like that is that it always affects the egos, and everyone gets stained by it in some way. And that can be fine and very innocent, but it can be horrible as well.
Although I behave in a quite reserved way in my personal life, give me a stage and I'll be as flamboyant as I can.
Always changing genres, making very different films is a good idea. It's a way of making yourself feel vulnerable again, getting back to that innocence. As is working within a circumspect budget.
For us, destiny always feels... if you obey, it's almost a passive thing.
I grew up in a city, I'm a city person - I go on holiday and I'm bored.
I love watching the Bond movies obviously and I grew up reading the books as a kid. I've always loved them because of that.
You know what actors are like; they moisturize every night. They're frozen in time.
I trained in the theatre.
