I explained I wanted to make the film because to me it was not just literature but real life, the life I lived in Czechoslovakia from my birth in 1932 until 1968, nurse Ratched was my Nurse Ratched, telling me what I could and could not do ; what I was or was not allowed to say ; where I was and was not allowed to go ; even who I was and was not.

Milos Forman

Categorized in : Top News

I get out of the taxi and it's probably the only city which in reality looks better than on the postcards, New York.

Milos Forman

cities new-york reality

You really see life around the principals to be as important as the main, principal actors. That's what cinéma vérité taught me - that it's not a question of having a main character, a great actor, and the rest is unimportant. Every detail, every face in the crowd is important.

Milos Forman

unimportant important character

I lived long enough in a society where freedom of speech was nonexistent, and I know what kind of misery that creates - starting with the fact that life becomes very boring for people who just try to survive, and are quiet, and try not to buck the system. And, of course, it can be devastating for people who try to speak against it.

Milos Forman

freedom-of-speech long people

Because if you lived, as I did, several years under Nazi totalitarianism, and then 20 years in communist totalitarianism, you would certainly realize how precious freedom is, and how easy it is to lose your freedom.

Milos Forman

realizing easy years

People who make documentaries have to be faithful to the facts. But when you are making a drama, a fiction based on the life, all you have to be faithful to is the spirit of the facts, which I think I was in every case. As long as you don't violate their spirit, you can play with the facts.

Milos Forman

drama long thinking

People must not think that all bad in man which is unleashed, the moment you impose censorship disappears from man.

Milos Forman

men people thinking

The worst evil is - and that's the product of censorship - is the self-censorship, because that twists spines, that destroys my character because I have to think something else and say something else, I have to always control myself.

Milos Forman

self character thinking

For me, speaking is work. It's not like when you breathe.

Milos Forman

breathe

What I like about masturbation is that you don't have to talk afterwards.

Milos Forman

masturbation funny-sex sex

Ideological pressure is much more crippling than commercial pressure. Crippling to your own freedom of thinking and creating, crippling the final results. If you wanted to succeed during the really hard-line totalitarian regime, you have to make so many compromises to please the censors that you don't recognize the original idea from the final result.

Milos Forman

succeed compromise thinking

When you finish a film, before the first paying audience sees it, you don't have any idea. You don't know if you made a success or a flop, when it comes to the box office.

Milos Forman

audience film office

I'm convinced the Beatles are partly responsible for the fall of Communism.

Milos Forman

dumb stupid fall

I tell you, in my opinion, the cornerstone of democracy is free press - that's the cornerstone.

Milos Forman

cornerstones democracy opinion

The Czech movies, the quality movies, are trying to show the life in the country as it is, in an entertaining way, while in America, the majority of movies are wonderful fairy tales.

Milos Forman

quality trying country

First of all, to defend my work, I had to believe that I am doing a totally silly, stupid, innocent comedy.

Milos Forman

stupid silly believe

Memories are doing funny things to us.

Milos Forman

funny-things memories

Communists love to make films about composers, because composers compose music and don't talk subversive things.

Milos Forman

communist composer film

I think everybody dreamt somehow to make a film in Hollywood, you know.

Milos Forman

hollywood film thinking

You know what happened, you know, in 1938: France, England, you know, just sold out Czechoslovakia to Hitler.

Milos Forman

sold-out france england

Definitely it would be foolish to try and make my Czech films here in America, as foolish as it is when some Czech filmmakers try to make movies of America in Czechoslovakia. It was always abysmal stuff.

Milos Forman

film foolish trying