Vincente Minnelli Quotations

But I went down to Venezuela and spend a few weeks going through jungles. It's fantastic looking.

But surrealism is present in most of my pictures.

I always have coffee without sugar, you know. Just cream.

I use colors to bring fine points of story and character.

The Pirate is surrealism and so, in a curious way, is Father of the Bride.

Fortunately, John Houseman is a marvelous writer and he sat in on so many story conferences. He worked with Welles, you know, and he's a marvelous man.

I always liked the Van Gogh story because I was terribly involved in that.

West Side Story was terribly important because of the style of the dancing and the gangs of New York.

Dali was the great painter then and surrealism was a way of life.

I've worked with an awful lot of people. Katy Hepburn, Spencer Tracy.

I allow an area for improvisation because the chemical things actors bring to stories make it not work.

American films are terribly popular all over the world and American movie stars are terribly important. I don't know why.

But I think musicals are going to have to deal with important subjects.

Cedric Gibbons was the grand cardinal of the art department.

I had given up the theater and everything propelled me into entertainment. And I didn't resist it.

I made three films with Douglas, two with Charles Boyer.

I see wonderful films by Bertolucci, Visconti, and Fellini.

I seem to be drawn to things that actually happen.

I started out to be a painter and was born into the theater.

If anybody reads a story in a magazine or book, different pictures compete in their minds.

In the Thirties, when I was in New York, I did the first surrealistic ballet in a show of mine.

No, I only like whether I like the story or not, essentially see something in it that isn't completely there.

Nowadays the audience has changed. No one can anticipate the audience.

That's what I think musicals will come to. No backstage stories, nothing of that sort.

We shot that in all the real places where Van Gogh worked.

I work to please myself. I'm still not sure if movies are an art form. And if they're not, then let them inscribe on my tombstone what they could about any craftsman who loves his job: "Here lies Vincente Minnelli. He died of hard work.

But the idea of a man being killed during an episode of love and coming back as a woman started to impress me more and more and more.

Having started as a designer I have a lot to do with settings and costumes, because I think they relate to the story and character, explain it.

You have to be a producer nowadays. You have to find the subject, find the writer, find the cameraman, cast it, and then you go to a producer.

Cabin in the Sky ... Ain't It the Truth.

Color can do anything that black-and-white can.

I learn new things all the time.

The Long, Long Trailer (1954) actually happened and the man wrote a book about it. Father of the Bride, same thing; a banker wrote that who had never written anything else.

It's the story that counts.

Designing Woman was written for the screen.

Once you find the right idea, then go ahead and embellish it.

If you want to learn how to sing, listen to Ella Fitzgerald.

I feel that a picture that stays with you is made up of a hundred or more hidden things. They’re things that the audience is not conscious of, but that accumulate.

It's always the story that interests me.