Joe Carnahan

“I did a pilot for Fox years ago called 'Faceless,' with Sean Bean. I always thought it was such a cool show because it was really raw. I thought we were pushing it. This was back at a time b...”

“Think about a guy like Bob Mitchum, with his kind of chest gut not defining itself one way or the other. Was there anybody tougher? Lee Marvin was a marine sniper during the Second World War...”

“In TV, you can carve out a beautiful little niche like 'Breaking Bad' did. Like 'The Wire' did. Like 'Homeland' did.”

“'The A-Team' compared to making 'Narc' was a breeze. There's a whole other skill set and whole other kind of bone structure that goes into making a movie like 'Narc' versus 'The A-Team.'”

“Regardless of the medium, be it television or feature or documentary, I'm not gonna distinguish and worry about my particular canon, whatever that means.”

“In terms of big spectacle, I thought 'Captain America 2' was phenomenal. I really loved that movie, and it was a great movie as a stand-alone.”

“'The Blacklist' was really right place, right time. I read the script and met with Jon Bokenkamp, John Eisendrath, John Fox and John Davis, and we just hit it off. They understood that I was...”

“I guess I much prefer the path of the contrarian: the guy who goes against the grain a bit. The careers of the people who I admire deeply - like the Coen brothers and Soderbergh - don't repe...”

“To me, the bones of 'Smokin' Aces' is in the Coen brothers. 'Barton Fink' and 'Raising Arizona.' Those two movies, if you look at them, that's where a lot of that comes from.”

“My hope, my real hope, is that whatever you hold in your heart, whatever you truly believe, and you've put your faith in, that that's what 's waiting for you. I think that'd be wonderful. Yo...”

“If 'The Blacklist' taught me anything, it was kind of open-ended intrigue and leaving questions unanswered. Creating this kind of mystery by virtue of depriving the audience of these easy an...”

“To me, still my favorite 3D film is 'Dial M for Murder.' I thought that was great. Hitchcock used it, could put you in the room, which I thought was fantastic, but I'm still not a devotee of...”

“Be open-minded and available to everything and not just saying it's Jesus Christ or bust. So much of the world will do that. I find it troubling... Don't be dogmatic.”

“I'm pretty rigorous about the drafts I turn in. I don't turn in something that's so ungodly they go, 'What the hell is this?'”

“There's a duality of a guy calling on God: 'Where are you when I need you?' and then, at the same time, 'God helps those who help themselves.' I think that contradiction does exist in all of...”

“I can never kind of fathom a character's journey beyond the moment when you go to black, any more than when people ask me what Jason Patric did with the tape recorder at the end of 'Narc,' y...”

“I always thought that as much as I love 'White Jazz,' it became almost unfilmable at some point, because there are so many strands, so much, and it became so psychotic... that's what made it...”

“'Raising Arizona' is maybe my favorite comedy of all time. What's great about it is that as slapstick as it gets, it has great moments of emotion and caring. Them bringing the baby back and...”

“There's a film that I wrote that I want to do called 'The Grey,' which is about a group of pipeline workers in Alaska flying back into civilization after being remote for a number of months....”

“I think as a filmmaker and as a director, you shortchange yourself if you inhibit the ability of your actor to bring their own personal experiences to the characters.”