Griffin Dunne

“Documentaries have always inspired me in narrative filmmaking.”

“My hunger and desperation, being an actor, an out of work actor - my memory of that is as fresh as an open wound.”

“New York means so much to people. If you're inclined to leave the nest, New York is where most people think they have to go, and it's been that way since the first skyscraper.”

“As a director, I've been able to combine with what I've learned as an actor and as a producer: it melds quite nicely into what I feel like I should have been doing all along.”

“On every movie I've done as a director, I look at the producers and having done it, I don't envy them, at all.”

“I came to New York to be an actor and I became a film producer first.”

“Although there was a screenplay, the actors never knew what questions I was going to ask them, and all of my character's voice-over narration and scenes were added after the fact.”

“Every movie is wildly different. So many of the problems are the same, but they take on different guises.”

“But at the same time, never having final cut before, I really learned an interesting thing for any studio executive who is reading this: that if a director has final cut, it's actually easier and more interesting to listen to notes.”

“And I like being able to go back and forth, and I don't really care if it's a small budget or big budget or studio or independent, as long as it's got a story that's compelling and there's enough money to make the picture.”

“I'm being told it saves money to shoot in Toronto, because of tax benefits, the crews are cheaper, but what I save in the bottom line, I lose in a million other ways.”

“But I remember feeling as a producer I felt like the guy who called the caterer and got the band; I had to work the party while everybody else was having a good time.”

“In the '80s, I can't say that Amy and I were aware of an independent film community. We could only get a certain amount of money for our pictures, which made them low budget movies, but they were distributed through studios.”

“I've always been schizophrenic; I've never been interested in limiting myself.”

“If movies are set in New York, they really should be shot in New York.”

“I produced six movies with Amy Robinson since the very early '80s.”

“I'm in five guilds; that's a lot of dues to pay. So I have to keep on working.”

“I only got to be able to act, because I gave myself a job as a producer.”

“It struck me that working digitally with a small crew, I could lay out a general plan for Famous and hope for mistakes which would create something more than satire and something less than truthful reality.”

“I met Steve McQueen once. Well, met isn't really the right word.”