Frank Darabont Quotations

I think once you've finished a movie you really have to detach from it so that you can come back and watch it as an audience member.

Some of us have great original ideas and some of us depend on adaptations.

A director shouldn't get in the way of the movie, the story should.

And I don't think I'm giving away any secrets here, but there are a lot of terrible scripts in this town.

I think a story should take as long to tell as it is appropriate to that particular story.

To me, length is an artificial and arbitrary factor in a film.

Visual storytelling of one kind or another has been around since cavemen were drawing on the walls.

Mission Impossible 3 was actually a total gas for me. It was really fun.

My favorite was the Green Mile parody in Mad Magazine.

My flat-out favorite movie of the year was Toy Story 2.

Of course, horror/fantasy has always been this disreputable stepchild of literature.

My editor and I had a theory that if the movie engages their attention, they won't mind sitting there for three hours - which I find true myself.

I find it doesn't pay to take oneself too seriously. And I like that sort of irreverence when I see it with other people.

If I read a script that I have enormous respect for and I don't know what to do to it, then I'm going to be honest about that.

He's delighted with it, ... And indeed, I think that for him, this really came from the heart, this piece. So to have it represented well to the movie-going audience was quite a pleasure for him.

Well, you don't want to go too far afield with a character like Indiana Jones. You want to keep it somewhat real but my God, there's certainly an element of the fantastic with Indiana Jones that you lack with Ethan Hunt.

I wrote a script, Steven loved it, wanted to shoot it this year. George didn't love it, it got sort of lost between two conflicting opinions and now I think they're trying to figure out what, if anything, to do from here,

Steven Spielberg's a huge influence on a lot of people, and Schindler's List still looks like a great movie.

I think Michael really brings the heart and the soul to this thing. The character of Coffey has to be perfection. If that role isn't perfection, if it's not played to perfection by an actor who can be vulnerable and expose his heart, I think the movie fails.

Well, I think it's important to always have a sense of humor.

Well, if you focus on the human story, everything else is gravy.

You go to see a movie nowadays, and its completely pre-digested for you. You leave it in the theater the moment you walk out the door; you don't take it home with you.

Even in The Green Mile, towards the end, there were moments where I was moved and the water still turns on.

The tone of The Green Mile is so delicate and dramatic.

I should thank God or somebody for inventing Michael Clarke Duncan,

You never know where your best intentions will get derailed, where challenges can defeat you.

There was obviously a concern, because nobody sets out to make a three-hour movie. Nobody particularly wants that.

It's true, I am a control freak and I am incredibly anal-retentive, as my friend Stephen King has pointed out.

It's been a great run of good fortune for me as a writer.

Every aspect of directing is kind of a difficult one for me.

It occurred to me last year that we were coming up on a 10-year anniversary, and I thought, I've been meaning to do a special edition DVD for some years anyway, what better time to do that,

The fascinating thing about this third one is it's a much more realistic and much more gritty approach to a Mission Impossible movie than has been seen before.

I'm glad that stuff like this and The Green Mile and Dolores Claiborne and Stand By Me have brought Stephen King properly into focus as a storyteller.

I love having a context of a certain period of time in which to tell a story.

I'll take a walk up on the hill or whatever, just get out and let my mind float around the problem rather than trying to attack it directly.

I really don't think that by the time we're trying to get the audience to see Fahrenheit 451 they're going to be confused with Michael Moore's movie at all.

Because I've really got to fall in love before I want to direct again. I don't want to do it just to do it.

But hey, as they say in The Godfather, this is the business we have chosen. Things turn out, sometimes they don't.

And I've come to a place where I'm really very anxious to be focusing on getting my own movies made and not wrestling with other people's problems and other people's deadlines.

The human race is fundamentally insane. If you put two of us into a room together we're soon gonna start figuring out good reasons to kill one another.

Boy, I'd hate to shoot on tape or disc or whatever the hell they're talking about. I love film.

I spent 20 years of my career primarily being a writer for hire.

I'd like to think that my films are personal enough to exist without hearkening back to their respective novels.

I am fascinated with times past.

The only person who can, with impunity, make the movie he wants to make, has got to be Steven Spielberg.

Stanley Kubrick was a big inspiration. People accuse me of never using my own material. But when did Kubrick? You look at his films and they are completely unique... completely separate entities.

I'm still learning. It's all a learning curve. Every time you sit down, with any given episode of any given show, it is a learning curve. You're learning something new about how to tell a story. But then, I've felt that way about everything I've ever done - television, features or whatever. Directing or writing, it always feels like the first day of school to me.

The amazing thing about any movie is not whether it's good, but that it got made at all.

One of my favorite movies of all time is 'It's A Wonderful Life,' which is a pretty interesting choice for a seasonal Christmas favorite, because it's about a guy who wants to commit suicide and is presented with reasons not to.

I've never been a big fan of the music-video style of editing movies that crept in the last few decades. I like stuff that's able to take its time.

The Exorcist' is amazing because it recognizes that silences can be as powerful as sound effects.

If you're going to succeed, you've got to be like one of those punch-drunk fighters in the old Warner Bros. boxing pictures: too stupid to fall down, you just keep slugging and stay on your feet.