Brett Ratner
Brett Ratner
Brett Ratneris an American film director, film producer, screenwriter, film editor, and music video director. He is known for directing the Rush Hour film series, The Family Man, Red Dragon, X-Men: The Last Stand, and Tower Heist. He was also a producer on the Fox drama series, Prison Break, as well as the comedy Horrible Bosses and its 2014 sequel...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth28 March 1969
CityMiami Beach, FL
CountryUnited States of America
I'm not invited to the Vanity Fair dinner where they watch the Oscars - or even the Oscars themselves - so I sit at home and watch it with a bunch of close friends.
I went to a public high school and most of the comedy was coming from the black kids and the Asian kids and the Hispanic kids. And, the coolest kids to me where always the black kids. They were always fashion forward and they always dressed the coolest. They were always the best dancers, and just the coolest people.
I've worked with a hundred of the biggest artists in the world, from Madonna to Mariah Carey, and Michael Jackson is just beyond. He's at a whole other level, spiritually. He's got the God spot. Everyone has it, everyone has that God spot, but it's just the way he's in tune with it. He has it. It's right there, and when he starts to sing, God has just opened it up for him. That's why he's not comfortable around people and things, because he's just such a unique - he feels blessed just to be himself. "I can't believe I'm Michael Jackson."
When you're fearless, you take more risks because you're less conscious of failure or what can go wrong.
Listening is harder than just acting. Listening is the hardest part.
In this day and age, you need a lot of patience if you are in the movie business.
I've watched 'Being There' over 50 times, and every time I watch it, I love every frame. I just wish I had directed it myself.
I've been a book collector since I was young, since I was a kid.
I learn more from the audience than I can from anybody else. Not from what they write on the scorecards, but how they respond to the movie while they're watching it - where they laugh and where they react.
You can't show a four-hour movie in a theater, really.
People can criticise all day long, I think I've proven myself, I think I deliver. And I agree, box office does not mean a movie's good, but I feel like I'm making good movies and I'm delivering in box office.
There's no greater feeling than people coming up to me and going, "Man, my father was dying, and we went to see Rush Hour, and it was the greatest night we had in years together. We sat in that theater and we laughed for two hours without stopping. That was just a great memory that I had before my father died."
Miami Beach - that's where I grew up, in a middle-class Jewish family led by my maternal grandfather. Me, my great-grandmother - a Holocaust survivor, who was my roommate - my grandparents, my mom and her brother all shared a four-bedroom house.
I'd want to marry Cate Blanchett, date Kate Bosworth, and spend the weekend with Elisha Cuthbert.