David MacKenzie

“When you make a movie, you don't know how it'll turn out. You can only guess.”

“Being open to what's happening in front of you is the most important thing about being a director. To allow the magic to exist and to be light enough on your feet to harness it as it's happening. That's what makes cinema interesting.”

“Event cinema is what it is, and I understand why it's successful. It started with things like 'Jaws,' which are extraordinary movies. But what we've lost are great character films which are beautifully directed and had great movie stars in them. Films that were about something rather than about spectacle.”

“I have a memory of this experience when I was young, watching 'Stop Making Sense,' the Talking Heads concert movie, which is one of the best concert movies ever, and I saw it in a full house in New Zealand, and everyone was cheering between songs, and you really felt like you were part of the audience at the gig.”

“I really don't want to make the same film twice, so I am conscious of going after material that is significantly different to anything I've done before.”

“When I started making films, all the theaters, the screen would slide open the widest possible point, and that would be widescreen. But now, theaters are geared up for around 16:9, so scope is now 'letterboxed.' In a way, if you want the big picture, you shoot 16:9.”

“I like the idea of the audience absorbing the language and getting to understand it as they journey through the film. It starts off being more obscure, but you get used to it. A 'Clockwork Orange' thing. I read 'Clockwork Orange' without any vocabulary, and I got to understand the words as I went through it. I like that process. It immerses you.”

“I travel light as a director. I don't have monitors on my set.”

“Edinburgh is a sort of gothic fairytale city, and it can be a gothic horror city as well.”

“I spent the first part of my career trying to avoid genre because I felt like genre, in some way, was cliche.”

“As a director, when you embrace a project, you try to understand as much as you can about its world, and you do that by embracing and engaging with people who are in that world. Then it's down to your best instincts, which is what most directing is about anyway.”

“I'm definitely going to continue to make films in Scotland, but that doesn't mean it will be exclusively there, and I don't have any particular need to wave a flag.”

“I like the energy of doing things fast. We shot 'Starred Up' in just four weeks, and we edited it in four weeks.”