Movie Lies & Quotes

Written
by
Stanley B. Gill

What a wonderful world Hollywood is when memorable lines last a lifetime. This is a collection of movie lies & quotes I have actually heard in my career. Some famous. Some not so famous.

Oh, and a spattering of some of my favorite quotes that would just as likely apply to Hollywood.

“Nobody knows anything.”
– William Goldman, Adventures in the Screen Trade

“If you tell the truth you don’t have to remember anything.”
– Mark Twain

“Years and years ago I worked for a producer who taught me more about how not to behave than how to behave. One of the most valuable lessons I ever had. This individual said to me, ‘You get shit on by the people above you, and you shit on the people below you.’ I thought, ‘Hah, there’s a life lesson.’”
– Steven Bochco

“Less brains are necessary in the motion picture business than in any other.”
– Producer Lewis J. Selznick, to a congressional committee (David O. Selznick’s dad)

“The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack in will.”
― Vince Lombardi

“A lawyer’s time and advice are his stock in trade.”
― Abraham Lincoln 16th President of the United States

“The true measure of a man is not how he behaves in moments of comfort and convenience, but how he stands at times of controversy and challenges.”
– William Frederick “Bull” Halsey, Jr. 5-Star Fleet Admiral WWII

This is the MARTINI.

This is the ABBEY SINGER.

We’ll be working with A–list talent.

We’ll have an early rap because…

We’ll never see that.

“I’ve wasted the greater part of my life looking for money and trying to get along, trying to make my work from this terribly expensive paint box. I’ve spent too much energy on things that have nothing to do with making a movie. It’s about two percent movie making and 98 per cent hustling. It’s no way to spend a life.”
– Orson Welles, quoted at the end of The Battle over Citizen Kane

“School for me would have been wasted time, because they didn’t teach show business… I could feel it. It was busting out in me from the moment I learned to talk.”
– Jack L. Warner, My First Hundred Years in Hollywood

“That’s the best part of Los Angeles. It’s filled with these Don Quixote characters. Everyone’s left their families, their homes, their friends, their jobs, to pursue a dream, where they know the percentage of them achieving that dream is never. And they do it anyway. And everyone’s shared the same dream, and no one’s sure if it was a premonition, or, a delusion. And there’s only one way to find out.”
– Ryan Gosling “Seduced and Abandoned” HBO documentary

Of course I can ride (swim, drive…)

It’s got kids in it. The hours will be short.

You can only use one or the other.

“You know how you can tell you have a friend in Hollywood? They stab you in the chest. Because everybody else is going to stab you in the back baby.”
– Stanley B. Gill

“Learning to make films is very easy. Learning what to make films about is very hard.
– George Lucas

“Actors are a necessary evil in filmmaking.”
– [Redacted]

We’ll be ready in 5 min.

She (he) will be finished in 5 min.

She (he) is coming out of the dressing room now.

I can do my own makeup and hair.

I’m more critical than you are and I think I look great.

Work with this. You’re killing us.

There are no lines in this one, so they won’t talk.

“It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.”
– Mark Twain

“There has to be a second ninja.”
– Ryan Labat

We’ll be starting soon. We should have the money any day now.

We have half the money already. We just need the other half.

There’s no way we can lose money on this.

The checks are in the mail.

We’ll correct it on your next check.

You have my word on it.

There will be a little something extra in your envelope next week.

“What part of ‘no’ don’t you understand? Is it the ‘n’ part, or the ‘o’ part?”
– [Redacted]

We have a really great script and crew.

They never discussed this in the meeting.

I didn’t get the changes.

I never saw a script.

We have just a few notes for you.

They must have never gotten my notes.

They only told me last night.

No one told me.

My agent never said anything about this.

“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”
– Douglas Noel Adams, author “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”

“Being a screenwriter is like being a mother. You give birth, and you get to raise the child through age three – through the most wretched, vomitous, diaperish, nasty years of the child’s life, where you clean him and teach him how to walk and help him to talk, and all of a sudden you have this child who’s just about to communicate with you…and you’re just about to see him really become a person, and then the adoption agency comes in and takes this kid away from you and someone else raises it.”
– Jane Anderson “What It’s Like to Be a Screenwriter”

Rain won’t hurt us. You won’t even see it unless it’s really hard.

The PA had to leave before the checks were ready.

“It’s not a real movie unless blood is shed in furtherance of the art.”
– [Redacted]

The car won’t move in the shot.

The door won’t open in the shot.

We won’t ever look that way.

Do this one for me and I’ll remember you on the next one.

I couldn’t call you on this one… The producer (director) wanted someone else.

“They” told me to do it.

“I wanted sandwiches! So they could eat with one hand!”
– Orson Welles screamed as the light dissipated behind him

If they’re looking at that we’re in trouble.

I know it won’t match, but since we’re here let’s shoot it anyway.

In the time we’ve wasted talking about it, we could have shot it again.

Don’t worry about it, they’ll fix it in post.

Don’t worry about it, we checked with the union and it’s okay.

“Sometimes you can lead a jackass to water, but they still think they’re a horse.”
– [Redacted]

We’ll make sure that the crew doesn’t eat, drink or smoke inside the location.

We won’t let anyone drive to the set. Everyone will park in the crew parking.

Don’t ask me. I wasn’t here that day.

It works for me.

“New Orleans food is as delicious as the less criminal forms of sin.”
– Mark Twain

It’s good enough for television. It’ll look great on my iPad.

Don’t worry. We’ll clear the set for that scene.

“Not my circus. Not my monkeys.”
– Polish Proverb

“My circus. My monkeys.”
– [Redacted]

What is this, film school?

This isn’t my first rodeo.

“There’s nothing to it. All you do, you get an idea, you set down what you wanna say on paper. Then you hire somebody else to fill-in the commas and shit, where they belong. If you’re not positive yourself. Maybe fix-up the spelling where you have some tricky words… Although I’ve seen some scripts I know the words weren’t spelled right. There’s hardly any commas in it at all. So I don’t think that’s too important. All right, you get to the end, you write-in fade out. You’re done.”
– Delroy Lindo as Bo Catlett in “Get Shorty”

“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.“
– Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“Here I am paying big money to you writers and what for? All you do is change the words”
– Samuel Goldwyn

We’re shooting on the RED.

I should’ve never turned down that Jessica Simpson video.

I’ve done lots of these kinds of shows.

Everyone lies in Hollywood. Even the people you haven’t met yet are lying to you.

“An oral agreement isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.“
– Samuel Goldwyn

“Picture is 50% of filmmaking and Sound is 50% of filmmaking.”
– Stanley B. Gill

“Everything in New Orleans is a good idea.”
– Bob Dylan, Chronicles: Volume One

We’ll wrap before sunrise.

We’ll wrap before sunset.

It’s my understanding films don’t get made overnight.

The critics are raving.

“Well, the way they pick the shows on TV is they make one show, and that show’s called a pilot. And they show that one show to the people who pick the shows, and on the strength of that one show, they decide if they want to make more shows. Some get accepted and become TV programs, and some don’t, and become nothing. She starred in one of the ones that became nothing.”
– Samuel L. Jackson as Jules in “Pulp Fiction”

“There are two kinds of actors. Those you can f*ck and those who can f*ck you. The other ones are pretty professional.”
– [Redacted]

“All the doors in Hollywood are hard to open, but the easiest of the hard doors to open is writing.” – [unknown]

Everybody gets f*cked in Hollywood. It’s just a matter of whether you want it or not.
– [redacted]

“My contract reads, ‘I refuse to work with directors who don’t bathe on a daily basis.’”
– Stanley B. Gill

“The marketability of a movie has somehow or another become more important than the story.”
– Jeffery Katzenberg “Seduced and Abandoned” HBO documentary

“The real problem in this business if you make a great film, you really get down to it, you make a great film that no one goes to see, versus a bad film that everyone has gone to see, the way you keep your job is you make that bad film that everyone went to see. You don’t get good points for the film no one went to see.”
– Ron Meyer “Seduced and Abandoned” HBO documentary

“I’ve heard filmmaking described I think best as you’re laying track in front of a moving train. The train is not going to stop. And so the decisions that you make in that real-time are going to be the sum total of everything you’ve learned along the way and your instinct.”
– James Cameron, MasterClass

“The key is this. The technology does not dictate the art. The art dictates the technology. The art comes first. And you use the technology for the art. Whatever that art may be.”
– Martin Scorsese, MasterClasss

“There are a lot of places I like, but I like New Orleans better.”
– Bob Dylan, Chronicles: Volume One

“Funny things are like cockroaches. They’re hard to kill. They stick around, and I think we’re just comedy cockroaches.”
– Jeff Schaffer, Showrunner “Curb Your Enthusiasm”

“Entertainment is a multidimensional model. You’re not just selling or not selling a movie. You’re selling a piece of IP for a particular period of time, in a particular space or territory or market. It’s not a simple inventory system model.”
– Jason Kassin, Founder and CEO Filmtrack

“Chase what you’re crazy about. The day will come when u will regret that you didn’t. Chase your crazy!”
– Gerry Vaillancourt (1950-2022)
click here for in memoriam

“If you fail to plan for business, business will plan for you.”
– Stanley B. Gill

RULES OF MY ENTREPRENEUR
1. Acute attention to detail shall be mandatory in this deal.
2. 100.0% honesty shall be mandatory in this deal.
3. Do not waste my time.
– Stanley B. Gill, Lessons Learned in Hollywood