Gary Ross Quotations

I mean, what is racism? Racism is a projection of our own fears onto another person. What is sexism? It's our own vulnerability about our potency and masculinity projected as our need to subjugate another person, you know? Fascism, the same thing: People are trying to untidy our state, so I legislate as a way of controlling my environment.

I loved making 'The Hunger Games' - it was the happiest experience of my professional life. Lionsgate was supportive of me in a manner that few directors ever experience in a franchise: they empowered me to make the film I wanted to make and backed the movie in a way that requires no explanation beyond the remarkable results.

I don't understand people who dream in black and white. I just don't get it. My dreams have always been vivid color.

History is full of examples of people who clamp down after they began to enjoy too much freedom. Freedom can lead to instability, anarchy, and confusion. So there can be a moral counter-revolution.

As time goes by the memories of sitting on the edge of a bed and reading aloud with your kid are going to be very meaningful in your own mental scrapbook.

What works about fairy tales is that they endure, and the great thing about fairy tales is that you can explore big, epic things that you can't really explore in other situations.

'Harry Potter' created a generation of readers in an era when kids could have disappeared into the depths of the Internet. That's no small feat. Every book series owes J.K. Rowling a debt of gratitude.

In a complex and troubling world, who wouldn't want to simplify? Everybody does. Everybody wants to simplify and put up a picket fence.

Really, each era has its own false nostalgia. We all put a picket fence up around something. For my generation it was the '50s, and for other generations it will be something else. Change is scary for everyone, as is complexity, contradiction, and an uncertain future.

Ultimately, so much Dr. Seuss is about empowerment. He invites us to disappear into our imagination and then blows the doors off what that can mean.

You can drain the life and nuances and complexity out of things by homogenizing them to make everything harmoniously dull, flat, conflict-free, strife-free.

Most modern science fiction went to school on 'Dune.' Even 'Harry Potter' with its 'boy protagonist who has not yet grown into his destiny' shares a common theme. When I read it for the first time, I felt like I had learned another language, mastered a new culture, adopted a new religion.

The great seats of power tend to be wide and open, not vertical and soaring. Red Square, Tiananmen Square, the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin - all massive but with large open spaces that project an image of might.

Any director, if you really ask them, will tell you that the toughest thing to do is like a dinner table or a dialogue scene because you need to keep that electricity maintained throughout the course of the film.

'Pleasantville' seems tonally ambitious, but it can handle a wide breadth of tone because it's so fanciful.

Despite recent speculation in the media, and after difficult but sincere consideration, I have decided not to direct 'Catching Fire.' As a writer and a director, I simply don't have the time I need to write and prep the movie I would have wanted to make, because of the fixed and tight production schedule.

If there's a 13- or 14-year old kid who is yearning for something beyond the social forces in his own world, in his own neighborhood, the library is the only place where he can go to find that. It was exciting and thrilling to me all the time I worked in the library. It's such a force for social good and it can do so much.

If you look at the opening of 'Private Ryan,' you are so in the point of view of those guys and there is a whole world swirling all around them. You are learning that geography as they are learning it.

The dynamic range of a digital camera is not that much greater than film, particularly if you push the ASA a little bit.

Why is every great children's story about a journey? Maybe that's because we are always on one.

We repress the things we're scared of, but if we just look at and embrace the things we're scared of, it's a much fuller, richer life that's also not as scary.

'Dr. Strangelove' was and is one of my favorite movies ever, and I just can't believe they actually blew up the world after that.

I love 'Chaplin'; I mean I really love 'Chaplin.' I just think there's a grace and an elegance that's almost never been matched.

I love design-based stuff. I dug it in 'Pleasantville' and dug it in 'Seabiscuit.'

I think the CG is an instrument to create reality. I don't think it's an instrument to create a heightened reality.

People who want to be a star get their teeth capped. People who want to be an actor get to work.

What's scary is that we're just moving out of the lowest period of demand for the year and OPEC at full stretch was unable to keep prices down,

World demand in the second half will average 3 million barrels a day more than in the second quarter.

My '50s were different than other people's '50s. The myth didn't permeate our world, 'Donna Reed' and all that. I longed for that, I wanted to be like other normal families on TV.

My guess is that OPEC will get a deal by the end of the week, but their lack of clarity has led to this thing taking longer than it should have.

Obviously I love 'The Godfather' movies. I think they're phenomenal.

From a supply and demand point of view, they can't materially affect the balances.

I would think they are setting their bargaining position high, so that when they sit at the table, they can then compromise.

I think it's great what they are doing. The clubs need this.

I think they felt a little more pressure, and I think the pressure being more public made it more difficult.

I think movies do play a valuable role in turning people on to the act of reading. I think that phenomenon just creates readers. At first they're going to love 'Harry Potter,' or they may love 'The Hunger Games,' but after that, they're going to love the act of reading and wonder, 'What else can I read?'

I thought it would be interesting to hear a conversation between filmmakers instead of just a filmmaker gassing on about his own movie. Steven is so literate about this stuff and a great film journalist in his own right and a good friend, so it worked out. He also loved the movie and volunteered to do it.

I wasn't going to make a slick, glossy over-produced piece of entertainment because then I would be doing what the Capitol did. Then I'm actually putting on the Hunger Games and not making a movie of the 'Hunger Games.'

There is plenty of crude but this will stoke fears of a supply crunch. There is no doubt prices will go higher.

There is plenty of crude, but this will stoke fears of a supply crunch. There is no doubt prices will go higher.

Family entertainment is really very necessary in our culture. Look how profitable they are. It's almost not discretionary. You need to take your family to the movies.

There's something so wonderful about writing in rhyme where it isn't just the meaning of the words, it's the music to the words and the shape and the sound.

There's nothing I'd rather do than sort of, you know, sit at my computer and rhyme.

Things like this, we take seriously and we deal with.

I've often made the comment that I don't know why everybody goes in it, because it's just an endurance test and the fun goes out of it. It's a long spiel, and I think people have changed. Years ago it was a drinking spiel, and it's not a drinking spiel anymore.

You can't have these sort of prices without a substantial effect on demand.

They're playing with fire and it looks like they're going to get their fingers burned.

It's interesting - in 'Fail Safe,' as well, they didn't back off. We were raised with kind of this spectrum of that Armageddon and lived under it, so those were probably the films. 'Fail Safe' sort of haunted me.

They have to get compliance in order. With six million barrels a day of spare capacity they don't have any credibility in the market unless they can control spare capacity,

This is just as much fun as playing in the water. It seems like there is a lot of bickering going on. Seems to be the wrong time. People need to be doing more stuff like this.

Once they lose that credibility they lose the ability to control prices and that credibility has started to slip away.

I left the conversation pretty much up to him. That way I would be fresher, and he's so good at this. I didn't want to prepare or spin anything. I just jumped in and let him take it wherever it went.

I mean, the wonderful thing about writing a book is that you're getting a finished product at the end of the day. You're communicating directly with the reader.

I mean, in 'Big' and 'Pleasantville,' it's a journey that the characters go on where I think they come to kind of meet themselves at the end and who they actually are and give full voice to who they actually are. And that, you know, obviously fascinates me for some reason. Maybe I didn't adequately grow up.

I tend to love actors. I was trained as an actor first so I'm drawn to actors.

Horseracing already has the highest mortality rate of any sport in the world per capita to the people who do it. If you crash in Nascar you still have a roll bar, and a cage, and a lot of protection. It's built to crash, but if you fall off a racehorse we all know what can happen, so it's tremendously dangerous.

There are not many people on Team Gary. Actually, it's two people. My kids.

You have to listen to the movie while you're making it. I think that's important.

Dr. Strangelove' was and is one of my favorite movies ever, and I just can't believe they actually blew up the world after that.

Now, I just made an animated movie a few years ago, 'The Tale of Desperaux', and that had twelve hundred shots in it. Twelve hundred CG shots is a pretty big plan.

As a writer and a director, I simply don’t have the time I need to write and prep the movie I would have wanted to make because of the fixed and tight production schedule,

You rarely get a tentpole that has this much emotional depth, this much character to dive into.

I have some favorites. I love Chaplin; I mean I really love Chaplin. I just think there's a grace and an elegance that's almost never been matched.

Governments have shown that if there is a substantial supply risk they are willing to act, and act quickly.

For the first time, traders have to worry about demand.

You can't tell your kids to read if you're just watching television. They have to see you read. And in that respect, I think it's important to walk the walk. It's a wonderful shared time.

All of a sudden, there's a new risk to being long whereas before it was a one-way bet. The IEA release has capped the market.