Neil Jordan Quotes

There’s no point in making a film out of a great book. The book’s already great. What’s the point?

Why should a horror film be just a horror film? To me, The Company of Wolves is a fairy tale; it’s got all those elements plus a lot more. And we know that fairy tales aren’t innocent any more.

When you’ve written a movie, you then get together with a whole lot of people and make it. In many ways, I think it is far nicer to be with people rather than being completely solitary.

Well, if you’re talking about the current climate, there’s a lack of content in American film because I think people are deeply confused about their emotions, and they don’t regret certain aspects of their own foreign policy.

Well, I suppose I’m interested in ways of storytelling and in stories that are about storytelling.

Well, Company of Wolves was about that literally, about fairy tales.

The most difficult thing is the organization of people and the expression of your intentions. It’s very easy to have a picture in your head and to imagine that you’ve told everybody about what you need.

The End of the Affair is almost like a play.

The Company of Wolves is about how society teaches young women to look at themselves, and what to be afraid of. It’s about a girl learning that the world of sensuality and the unknown is not to be feared, that it’s worth getting your teeth into.

The Company of Wolves doesn’t belong in any category, so it’s difficult to prepare an audience for it. It’s not a horror film, it’s not a fantasy film, it’s not a children’s film – so what is it?

No, I just thought of a story and wrote down what I saw. It was about two kids in Ireland who went around killing people. It was called Travelers, and it was made as an independent film.

Never make a promise – you may have to keep it.

My conception of it was that in a normal film you have a story with different movements that program, develop, go a little bit off the trunk, come back, and end.

It’s the same thing in a way, although writing a book is a very solitary thing.

It’s the opposite journey from what I’ve usually done with films. I find it very easy to go from, say, a lit, pleasurable environment, like what you see outside there, to a very dark place. But the opposite journey, which is what this movie takes, is much more complicated.

It’s nice to work with Hollywood because there is never any question of resources put at your disposal to make a film as long as it is the right thing to do.

It’s hard to know whether certain characters come to life or not, they either come to have their own life or they don’t. I’ve written many things in which the characters just remain inert.

It is extremely difficult to get movies that cost more than $40 million to be made these days.

Initially with The Butcher Boy, there was this kid growing up in this strange, weird environment that I remember from when I was a kid. And Patrick’s vision was so complete there.