Carroll Ballard

It used to be that if you made a good film that really worked on a lot of levels, that was the most important thing. Now you've got to sell people with a sound bite. There's no time for people to discover movies anymore. Show less «

If you don't have a million of what I call 'whammo' scenes, which means you can't go five seconds between somebody getting whammoed, studios don't think kids will like it. Personally, I think children are a lot more observant and adaptable. Show less «

That's exactly correct. Really great movies don't happen except by someone having a great passion for that movie, somehow, despite the fact they don't have the instant audience connection. Show less «

Yeah, for me, Kurosawa is still king.

Character and a world of its own, those are the things that are most important in any picture, that it takes you into a world of its own that is palpable in some way, that you can practically smell. The same thing with characters, they're not a stock, off-the-shelf item, they're unpredictable and ephemeral and interesting and unique. Show less «

They go to see animated animals, they go to see end of the world movies, they go to see TV remakes. They know what they are. The studio, y'know, to me the problem is, and it's been getting worse year by year, is the deals, the source of it. It's my own [concept]. The problem is that the deals that have been made between the distributors and the exhibitors. Since they make a fair amount of their money off of the DVDs that are after the theatrical release, they're interested in keeping the films in theaters for a while. But in terms of the money that they make ... They try to encourage the theaters to run the pictures for a longer period of time, so they give them a bigger share of the money. So the studio only makes money off of the film in the first couple of weeks. So that encourages them to make films that have an instant audience, something that grabs people's attention. That's why we're in the situation we're in now in terms of the only pictures that get made are the ones based on old ideas or things that are already known: known stars, known quantities of one kind or another. Show less «

The film business seems like it's kind of moving away from ... possibility.