Frederick Wiseman Quotations

Whether you're a newspaper journalist, a lawyer, a doctor. You have to organize your thoughts.

Anybody whose mind is functioning at all can't be content with the way the world works.

You have to edit the material. That assumes that some kind of a mind is operating in relation to the material. Not all minds are the same. Every aspect of filmmaking requires choice. The selection of the subject, the shooting, editing and length are all aspects of choice.

I don't like to read novels where the novelist tells me what to think about the situation and the characters. I prefer to discover for myself.

I hope that not only my documentaries, but everybody's documentaries, last. It will really confuse historians in the next century, because they'll have, in addition to all the print material, they'll have all these pictures to look at.

My goal is to make as many films as possible about different aspects of American life.

There are lots of different ways to make film. I don't believe there has to be any orthodox way to making movies, or any rules. It's what works for the filmmaker, and, theoretically, the audience.

They're all movies. I've always just done whatever interested me and this interested me. I never felt any need to rationalize to myself or to anyone else why I chose to do a fiction film. Maybe I'll do another fiction film, maybe I won't; maybe I'll do another documentary, maybe I won't.

Making movies is an effort, is an attempt to leave a trace of your existence.

I think my movies aren't sentimental. I think my movies are funny and sad and realistic. Not realistic in the sense that they're documentaries, but realistic in the sense that they're not idealistic, they're not optimistic, not pessimistic, and not propagandistic. They're an analysis of a situation. I call it as I see it, so to speak.

I'm too busy to be nostalgic, which is one of the reasons to keep busy. I'm not a very sentimental person.

One's relationship to time is complicated, and sometimes a day will drag on forever and sometimes it'll be over in a flash. When you look back, "I'm old," after 40 or 60 years, I can't believe I'm as old as I am.

Documentary filmmaking ruins you for real life, because you learn to be extremely attentive.

In moviemaking, you learn to pay attention to detail, because so much is in the detail. And when you're shooting, you try to be very alert to what's going on, even if you're tired.

Everything about a movie is manipulation.

I'm very careful of not being critical of other people's movies, which work in different styles. I think some of my movies can be interpreted as critical of their subjects.

It is always a problem to know what an image means.

Of course there's conscious manipulation! Everything about a movie is manipulation ... If you like it, it's an interpretation. If you don't like it, it's a lie - but everything about these movies is a distortion."

I'm interested in ordinary experience, and regardless of the precise definition of ordinary, and I've found that in so-called ordinary experience, there is as much comedy, tragedy, sadness, as there is in great drama. And I don't invent it, I recognize it.

I think I have an obligation, to the people who have consented to be in the film, to make a film that is fair to their experience. The editing of my films is a long and selective process. I do feel that when I cut a sequence, I have an obligation to the people who are in it, to cut it so that it fairly represents what I felt was going on at the time, in the original event. I don't try and cut it to meet the standards of a producer or a network or a television show.