Mark Rydell Quotations

So he was really a tortured fellow, ... He felt very lonely during that period. But he felt that it helped him. And it did.

He was a psychotic. He was a borderline psychotic. He was a terrific, sensational actor, with a magical screen presence, you couldn't keep your eyes off him, but he was paranoid. He was sure everybody was out to get him.

He said he wanted me to play a part, and he's done that a couple of times before but I haven't been available because I was making my own pictures.

Well you know, Woody doesn't rehearse, as opposed to my own method of directing where I really work with actors around a round table for weeks, examining the values of the material, so his technique is very different.

He was talking to me about bull-fighting, which was one of his passions,

It always amazed me that he was able to do it, and that Orson Welles was able to do it. I never understood it because the talents are absolutely opposite - polar opposites.

I remember thinking at that moment that he was not long for this world. Anybody who could do that had such a reckless personality that sooner or later it was going to catch up with him,

There are a lot of memories that are very... nutritious. I've had a very fortunate career. I've worked with practically every icon you can think of.

You don't improvise. Well, you might improvise in a moment, trying to find something but for the most part everything is written by Woody, every word.

I've always felt badly that Jimmy wasn't treated with the kind of respect that I thought he deserved, ... Having known him and known how committed and determined he was as an artist and how tortured he was as a human being, and knowing the agonies of his childhood, I felt that this was a good chance to make an honorable psychological portrait of him.

It's enough to say he was in the movie business for 16 months and here we are, talking about him 46 years later, ... That's a testimonial to the impact that he had, the power of his personality and his talent, which is indisputable.

For 30 years he was the conscience of Hollywood,

It's the unusual leading man. Most of the Hollywood leading men are powerful and capable and strong, heroes. He has this vulnerability, he's fragile, he struggles to find a way to live from day to day that we can identify with, that we can understand.

It's sad - it's sad for us old enough to remember when directors ruled, and films were substantially better than they are today. But it's hard to argue with those kinds of grosses.

He's very alive in a scene. He's a very good actor to act with. Even though through most of the picture he's blind, there are many places early in the picture I got to be with him before he was blind. Like convincing him in the office to do the picture.

I consider his performance to be a miracle, ... I think he's one of the most talented people I've ever met. You know, he's 22 years old. ... He just transformed himself. At times it seemed eerie. It was like cloning or channeling James Dean. There were moments where I thought, 'My God, this is really bizarre.'

No one turns down a film with Woody; it's something everyone wants in their career as an important moment. He's such a comedic genius, without question, so I was thrilled.

There are always at least five good films at the end of the year to get nominated, but generally speaking nowadays, it's more of the independent films that are recognized.

I don't know a lot of agents like Al Hack.

It's very difficult to break into motion pictures, but it's oddly easier for directors today because of independent films and cable, who have inherited for the most part those films of substance that the studios are reluctant to finance.

The picture is not a documentary, ... It's a drama that has to be crafted. Reality is not art. You have to make choices when you're trying to make something work. And the choices we make I think are accurate. There aren't any lies in it. There are assumpt

I long for the days when grosses were not even known. There was no weekend competition.

Well you're talking about a long career, a lot of movies, a lot of stars. I guess working with Henry Fonda and Katherine Hepburn was a great privilege.

Now a movie goes out to two, three thousand theaters and by Friday night at 10 o'clock they know if you are in or out. That desperate competition is, I think, horrendous. It's awful.

Yes, there are directors I admire, the mavericks. Altman. There are many good directors.

There's evidence of a social decline in direct proportion to technology and the industrialization of the motion picture industry.

It's kind of interesting to be a director who is all of a sudden being an actor playing an agent. This is my whole world!

It perhaps has a chance, a commercial chance, this film. It's funny, it's charming, the idea is original, it's unusual and it makes fun of the movie industry in a way that it needs to be poked fun at.