Bill Forsyth Quotations

My two elder sisters married Englishmen and went abroad.

The studio system reminds me of the stock market.

I didn't think Comfort and Joy was going to be a box-office smash.

The movie business is very much like that: people in authority making purely emotional decisions instead of interesting rational ones.

Perhaps naively I thought people understand what humor was, that it was invented by the human race to cope with the dark areas of life, problems and terrors.

It means that if they misunderstood Comfort and Joy, they misunderstood my other films.

I went to the Glasgow Youth Theatre and they just let me in. But I was so shy that I was there for about six weeks without actually introducing myself.

There are things that Scotsmen get and other people don't get in the dialogue. Scottish characters can be pinpointed by a phrase, targeted very quickly.

At the moment, my mother is the only one left in Glasgow, although it's certainly my home.

I was quite surprised how easily people wanted to pigeonhole things I've done.

I'd made these experimental films but I thought the major chore of a filmmaker was to relate to actors.

I'm not fond of any of my films in an intimate way, but Gregory's Girl would be number 4 on my list.

It's easier for me to get three times the amount of money I really want.

Universal wasn't out a lot of money, a million dollars or so, so it was easy not to put a lot of effort into the movie.

I don't really enjoy filming.

When I was a very small boy, my father was a plumber in a shipping yard, but then it transpired that he became a grocer.

I actually emptied a theatre. It was a 40-minute film, and about 400 people left during the screening.

I think, unconsciously, I was addressing myself more with Comfort and Joy than with my other films to Scottish people.

Financiers are suspicious because I work in low-budget.

When I read Housekeeping, it wasn't from the point of filming. It was months and months later that the idea of making it into a movie caught.

I've spent most of my life in Scotland, and I haven't moved around a great deal.

It was three years after I'd finished the script for Gregory's Girl that I got to make it, but I prefer That Sinking Feeling as a film.

So those who misunderstood Comfort and Joy the most were those who thought I was just trying to make a jolly farce.

That period of my life I was fairly reserved and I tried to make a collection of images that didn't really involve people.

It's easy for me to be a Scotsman because of the overwhelming feeling of most people in Scotland of being subservient to England and therefore having a chip on our shoulder.

It's only lately that I've first-hand experience of the international community and filmmaker people.

It's hard to make an incubator that worked. The concept sounds good, but I don't think Haywood County is a big enough place to do it. I don't see there has been any progress as far as incubating new businesses.

I made That Sinking Feeling more for them than for anyone else, so I knew there was no need to put a message into it.

In Toronto, I've met other director like me, in the wings of the studio industry and with a lively desire to maintain our independence, people like Paul Cox of Australia and Alan Rudolph, who works in the eye of the storm in Los Angeles.

I don't see there has been any progress as far as incubating new businesses.