Richard Donner Quotations

Working with Christopher, he convinced me he could fly, and he's convinced me he's going to walk again.

With The Omen, I really felt I wasn't in control. It was panic.

I worked for a lot of great directors.

I was very lucky. I started my own commercial company.

I was mesmerized by what it would be like for somebody who was a student of history and archeology to go back to a medieval period and really live it.

When when my first feature opportunity came along, I wasn't prepared, but we did it in about 17 days.

When I was doing half-hour shows, I loved it and was preparing myself for the hour shows. Then when I did the hour shows, I was preparing myself for the specials and features.

When I went to live television, I loved it. But television was so new and undeveloped that actors had to concede to the equipment.

I've always wanted to do a Crichton book. I really love his writing.

Soon it's all going to be digital anyway. It's all going to be saved on a little coin somewhere.

That's how you get a performance - they put trust in you.

They prepared Superman for a year, and they had the guy flying on a flat board with four wires. What were the challenges? Endless.

They're a couple of galloping horses, and they were just wonderful and all. You had to pull them back every once in a while and that was about it.

It's developing a relationship with actors that makes it work.

I had to physically convince the audience that he could fly but, just as important, I had to convince the audience that that man who was playing that role could fly. And I could not believe that Redford or Newman or any of those well-known actors in that role, in blue leotards and a red cape, flying.

The Lethals were never done as a special edition, but that's still a few years away. I'd love to do director's cuts of all four of them.

VERISIMILITUDE (the appearance or semblance of truth)

I think what some people are doing with effects is starting to get silly. It's overused.

It was just the thrill of a lifetime. Brando and Hackman were two of my heroes.

I was painting sets, working in editorial as an assistant, driving their trucks, lying that I knew how to drive a truck, and doing commercials and documentaries.

People say, You paid your dues, but I never paid any dues. It's always been a great trip.

I'm open to comments. I'm open to objective points of view, because I've been very narrow and very subjective.

When you make a film, you like to run it with an audience. They tell you you're narrow-minded or subjective, or that seems too long, or that doesn't work.

How was I going to make a man fly? How was I going to convince the public that an actor could fly?

I realized what you could do in motion pictures by surrounding yourself with geniuses.

I was an actor... or, at least, I was trying to be an actor.

I was really disappointed that Warner Bros. didn't think highly enough of my film or my filmmaking to ask me to make the new Superman.

I was tweaked by the idea of Superman immediately.

If you had the opportunity and some talent, there was no way you couldn't progress, because it was an open market. There was the advertising world, and there was the documentary world.

In motion pictures, the actor rules. The camera served the actor.

It was 1978 when Superman came out, and I kept thinking, Why don't they do something about it? They've done all these crappy attempts at comic book film adaptations. What can we do different? Why don't we just re-release this thing?

It was the beginning of film for television. So we had all of these great opportunities. Northwestern was probably the only major film school of its kind at the time that was graduating anybody important.

Superman was never previewed because the producers didn't trust Warners with the film.

It's only been a couple of times in my life that I've really locked horns with actors. It did not hurt the films, it just hurt the moment of the filmmaking.