Quote

The moral of filmmaking in Britain is that you will be screwed by the weather.

The British film industry has always tried to sell itself as something rather sophisticated. It's almost as if it thinks it is by royal command. It has always tried to claim the high ground, not only over Hollywood but over the whole of humanity!

I think it's important that we have a new batch of British film-makers that aren't doing the same old stuff. And that includes me.

But it's just that the whole country is making generally lousy films these days and has been for quite a while. That's the big problem that we all have to think about.

I think the British industry is set up to support British film, if we make films that enable them to support it. If you don't make a commercial film, distributors can't get behind it. If they don't get behind it, the film doesn't do well.

Britain is producing some of the worst films in the world. Our film industry is desperate to be part of America, and we just churn out flaccid imitations of bad films over there.

I absolutely refuse to accept the fact that any country in the world goes into a kind of film-making crisis. What happens is they lose confidence, they lose focus and the young film-makers of any particular generation can very easily get lost in that mix. It's happened in Italy, happened in France, happened in the U.K. during my lifetime.

I have watched people who have nothing to do with the film business, but who have become part of the circle for a short period of time. They can be truly devastated when the film wraps and people leave.

It's hard to pinpoint why all of a sudden a group of Australian films will be doing well and why they perhaps are better made than some from the past.

The thing that runs through the British film industry even today is a lot of unsung movies are financially the bigger ones. Even though they weren't always the greatest of movies, something in them was very potent which people loved.