Pedro Almodovar quotes

I don't want to imitate life in movies; I want to represent it. And in that representation, you use the colors you feel, and sometimes they are fake colors. But always it's to show one emotion.
-- Pedro Almodovar

#Fake People #Color #Use

Both sex and death are eternal themes. You could make thousands of movies on this theme, and whether you have a human being who is painting, singing, making a film, writing, these are the themes that you will come back to and return to. If you don't have any of these artistic expressions, sex is one of the only gifts that nature gave you for free, so it is very important to celebrate it. And then, with death, we are condemned to that. This is absolutely present in our lives.
-- Pedro Almodovar

#Sex #Writing #Expression

Even though I love my mother, I didn't want to make an idealized portrait of her. I'm fascinated more by her defects - they are funnier than her other qualities.
-- Pedro Almodovar

#Mother #Quality #Want

I tried to think about these two issues very freely. With sex, I think I can manage with that. With death, this is a more difficult theme for me. I'm not a believer, even though I'm baptized. I don't practice. I don't believe in God, so I feel very alone facing death. What I discovered is that the only way to recognize death is if you are part of life, if you are part of sexual pleasure, if you link it with sexual pleasure.
-- Pedro Almodovar

#Sex #Believe #Thinking

As a woman Penelope Cruz has changed as she has become an adult. But, as an actress she has not changed that much. She has something great, especially in comedy, and she hasn't been exploited as much as she could be in comedy, but particularly in that mix between comedy and drama. She's got a very special quality about her. You can place her in very extreme situations, especially very painful situations, in terms of how her character interprets it. And sometimes, the deeper and more human that pain is, the better she is at it.
-- Pedro Almodovar

#Pain #Drama #Character

I'm a very dull passenger. I don't speak. I don't have sex. No alcohol. I don't do drugs. The thing that I like about flying is that I feel like I can really concentrate. I used to write many things, and many ideas for my movies belong to this moment where I'm not anywhere specifically in terms of time and space and geography. I am suspended, and this suspension fits me very well.
-- Pedro Almodovar

#Sex #Writing #Ideas

When I'm writing, I don't put faces on the characters. When I finish the first draft of the script, I start visualizing, and sometimes then I think about one actor.
-- Pedro Almodovar

#Character #Writing #Thinking

I'm really a nightmare for the fashion designer because I take away all of his authority, and I become the authority, and I turn him into my assistant. You could say I intervene, and I intervene in a very determining way in all the aspects that have to do with the visual construction of the film.
-- Pedro Almodovar

#Fashion #Assistants #Way

Once we actually have the production script after many rewrites, at that point is when I start to decide what the look and colors will be. I work like a painter, even though I'm working in three dimensions. I'm working with chairs. I'm working with walls. But even things like the floor or the walls that people might think are not important, they actually do influence the visual look of the film. These are also things that I have to think about.
-- Pedro Almodovar

#Wall #Thinking #Color

The silent film has a lot of meanings. The first part of the film is comic. It represents the burlesque feel of those silent films. But I think that the second part of the film is full of tenderness and emotion.
-- Pedro Almodovar

#Thinking #Firsts #Emotion

Cinema has become my life. I dont mean a parallel world, I mean my life itself. I sometimes have the impression that the daily reality is simply there to provide material for my next film.
-- Pedro Almodovar

#Mean #Reality #Cinema

All my movies have an autobiographical dimension, but that is indirectly, through the characters. In fact I am behind everything that happens and that is said, but I am never talking about myself in first person. Something in me - probably a dislike of cheap exhibitionism- stops me from approaching a project too autobiographically.
-- Pedro Almodovar

#Character #Talking #Firsts

Hospitals are places that you have to stay in for a long time, even if you are a visitor. Time doesn't seem to pass in the same way in hospitals as it does in other places. Time seems to almost not exist in the same way as it does in other places.
-- Pedro Almodovar

#Long #Way #Visitors

I am partly not conscious of structure with my movies, but this is when I am writing. I leave my mind very free, and then I correct it after.
-- Pedro Almodovar

#Writing #Mind #Conscious

I make movies for my needs. My goal has never, never, never been to make shocking movie.
-- Pedro Almodovar

#Goal #Needs

After the enormous success of All About my Mother, all the awards and everything, I wanted to start a movie in exactly the same place that I used to be before. I wanted to show that all of the success had not changed my perception.
-- Pedro Almodovar

#Mother #Awards #Perception

Yes, women are stronger than us. They face more directly the problems that confront them, and for that reason they are much more spectacular to talk about. I don't know why I am more interested in women, because I don't go to any psychiatrists, and I don't want to know why.
-- Pedro Almodovar

#Stronger #Want #Faces

I used this line to demonstrate how important colors are in movies: It's not a caprice.
-- Pedro Almodovar

#Color #Important #Lines

It's a pity that I can never really enjoy my movies because, after the mixing, your capacity as a spectator just disappears. I have to think about what I felt just before the mixing.
-- Pedro Almodovar

#Thinking #Mixing #Pity

The 1980s really ended for me in 1992 with the film Kika.
-- Pedro Almodovar

#Film

I was born at a bad time for Spain, but a really good one for cinema.
-- Pedro Almodovar

#Cinema #Spain #Bad Times

When I make a film, I never stop uncovering mysteries, making discoveries. When I'm writing, filming, editing, even doing promotional work, I discover new things about the film, about myself, and about others. That is what I'm subconsciously looking for when shooting a film: to glimpse the enigmas of life, even if I don't resolve them, but at least to uncover them. Cinema is curiosity in the most intense meaning of the word.
-- Pedro Almodovar

#Movie #Writing #Editing

Cukor is one of my favorite directors. He was a master at directing women.
-- Pedro Almodovar

#Directors #My Favorite #Masters

The challenge to me as a director was for the audience to see the film as going on in a straight line, so that they did not sense all of these break-ups. I did not want a film to be a collage of all these images.
-- Pedro Almodovar

#Challenges #Lines #Want

All my movies are difficult to classify because they are very eclectic in mixing genres.
-- Pedro Almodovar

#Mixing #Genre #Difficult

My mother was an extremely creative woman, despite the fact that she lived the life of a rural housewife.
-- Pedro Almodovar

#Mother #Creative #Facts

Whenever I arrive on a real location, I have to move around and work out what the best angles are going to be.
-- Pedro Almodovar

#Real #Moving #Work Out

I think that the consciousness of passion makes you act very differently.
-- Pedro Almodovar

#Passion #Thinking #Consciousness

Cinema can fill in the empty spaces of your life and your loneliness.
-- Pedro Almodovar

#Loneliness #Space #Cinema

Anything that is not autobiography is plagiarism.
-- Pedro Almodovar

#Plagiarism #Autobiography

I also wanted to express the strength of cinema to hide reality, while being entertaining. Cinema can fill in the empty spaces of your life and your loneliness.
-- Pedro Almodovar

#Lonely #Loneliness #Being Alone

The Flower of My Secret is definitely more based in true emotions. I also wanted to make something more realistic, but not naturalistic or simple.
-- Pedro Almodovar

#Flower #Simple #Secret

There is a mysterious stillness and intimacy of a woman doing her hair and make-up which attracts me.
-- Pedro Almodovar

#Hair #Mysterious #Intimacy

I think decor says a lot about someone's social position, their taste, their sensibility, their work - and also about the aesthetic way I have chosen to tell their story.
-- Pedro Almodovar

#Thinking #Stories #Way