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I've never let producers tell me what to do. Even when I was making television, I always did what I wanted to do, and if I couldn't, I didn't do it. It was a freedom that, these days, young directors starting out don't have.

Michael Haneke

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Michael Haneke
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 23
Film Actor
Film Critic
Film Director
Screenwriter
Theatrical Director
University Teacher
Writer
München
Tell
Producers
Didn
Starting
Young
Directors
Wanted
Couldn
Even
Television
Always
Days
Never
Freedom
Making

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I consider all my films experiments.
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It became a gamble to myself whether I was able to do the exact same film [Funny Games]under very different circumstances.
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The dumber people are, the more they feel the need for a broad set of shoulders they can lay their head against.
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Mainstream cinema raises questions only to immediately provide an answer to them, so they can send the spectator home reassured. If we actually had those answers, then society would appear very different from what it is.
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Because in the feudal system of that period at least 80% of people lived in villages, so it's very simple to get a cross-section of society in a single village. You get the microcosm of the social macrocosm.
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It's more enjoyable to shoot in a studio on a single location with two actors... if they are good.
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