Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
People are worried about the degree to which corporate interest is starting to threaten human interest.
You know when somebody really knows what they're drawing from and you can feel it when you see the movie.
If two people are at completely different stages in their spiritual life, that can present a real problem.
We must realize that nature is absolutely essential for our survival, and we must act on that premise now.
I never think that a film should answer questions for you. I think it should make you ask a lot of questions.
As we say in the sewer, if you're not prepared to go all the way, don't put your boots on in the first place.
I tend to relate to a character in terms of the arc: what's interesting is where he starts versus where he ends up.
I have this embedded faith in the process through which films of a certain type get discovered on longer timelines.
You know, independent films have been institutionalized, practically. Every studio has got a boutique arthouse label.
When I'm the one who sits down and looks at the blank page and writes it out all the way, then I'll call it my script.
Basically, I think 21st century conservation is moving toward preserving ecosystems by dealing with the needs of people.
The incentive for business is not, and cannot, be anything other than the root incentive for all business: they must profit.
With Edward Norton you'd never say, "This is the one we're going with whether you like it or not." It has to be agreed upon.
You always end up getting involved in things because of, you know, the strange things your life brings you into contact with.
I've always liked the idea of taking old dramatic ideas and devices and making them feel relevant or contemporary or whatever.
I knew Danny DeVito and he knew me, so he wanted me to try Death to Smoochy. I loved that stuff and had a great time doing it.
Instead of telling the world what you're eating for breakfast, you can use social networking to do something that's meaningful.
It must be good to be in Germany and France, because I have completely forgotten what it is like to be proud of your government.
When you have a pipe salesman with a business called Macabee Pipes, I'd say you've got your tongue planted firmly in your cheek.
I do find myself drawn more to pieces that I feel are wrestling with the way that we're living now, what we're all going through.
Sometimes their oppression of emotion and the weird way it comes out is more interesting than painting it in bold primary colors.
If you try to make interesting films, you're going to be disappointed most of the time. I choose just not to look at it that way.
People think because I went to Yale that that implies privilege, and it is a privilege in the sense that it's an incredible opportunity.
The elegance of staying with a moment, without needing to stop and change all the lighting, made [the alternative] seem lazy and indulgent.
Most of what I know about environmental conservation I learned from my father, who has been a leader within the movement for over 30 years.
I remember as a kid having the offer of a scholarship, that it was going to be like going to Mars, and deciding to stay in my public school.
The Zionist Tulsa Jew who's pugnacious is a reality. I grew up around it. And I think it's really, really funny and surprising and unlikely.
In drama, I think, the audience is a willing participant. It's suspending a certain kind of disbelief to try to get something out of a story.
People say you can't make movies about your politics or the environment. And, generally speaking, I completely divide those sides of my brain.
Any questions I had about whether a redneck from Oklahoma could become a Brown Classical Philosophy professor ended when I met Tim [Blake Nelson].
I always felt that acting was an escape, like having the secret key to every door and permission to go into any realm and soak it up. I enjoy that free pass.
I grow tired of intelligence having such a limited manifestation in movies - "intelligence" usually meaning coastal, with a certain level of formal education.
There's a lot of romanticisation of the intuitive actor and method acting and all kinds of notions about getting inside a character and coming out from there.
Well, I don't feel that I've played so many bad guys, and I'm rot really drawn to villains per se. I think a lot of people relate to some of my characters' inner struggles.
All people are paradoxical. No one is easily reducible, so I like characters who have contradictory impulses or shades of ambiguity. It's fun, and it's fun because it's hard.
People wrestle sometimes making movies, and I think that conflict is a very essential thing. I think a lot of very happy productions have produced a lot of very banal movies.
There are tens of thousands of charities and hundreds of thousands, getting towards millions, of people now using it. And when I flip through it, I'm just blown away by people.
When people come together too young, they try to become one person. As you get older, you realize that you don't want to become one person because then you lose the person you are.
I've observed over and over that people seem to get a much deeper sense of fulfillment out of something they've done as an act of service than out of the things they do for themselves.
I don't tend to say it's time for one of this or that genre. Things flow to you in a strange way, and why you bump into a certain kind of thing in one moment is...it's hard to explain.
If you've got a piece and you can feel the person who's going to direct it is really made for it, if it's really special for them, then it's going to be a better-than-usual experience.
Most of the movies that I've made that I really felt good about and cared about made very little money anyway, so I'm not particularly worried about people downloading and sharing them.
I don't think you should sit around and wait for people to give you an opportunity to express yourself or do your work, or whatever. Actors have to be producers and writers have to be producers.
My greatest hope is that we transcend the most fearful thing, which is that we are rapidly degrading the ecological systems on this planet that support everything we are doing and all life on it.
It's ginned up by the corporate plutocracy as a way of distracting the working-class people that it's screwing. We hamstring our own natural progressivism in this country, and that's really stupid.
I'm not a very methodologically pure actor. Almost every time that I start, I feel completely at sea. Always at the beginning I feel like a fraud, really, because I'm never sure how to get started.
I get heartbroken flying into L.A. It's just this feeling of unspecific loss. Can you imagine what the San Fernando Valley was when it was all wheat fields? Can you imagine what John Steinbeck saw?
I do subscribe to the maxim that generally comedy is like jazz. Either you get it or you don't. You can't learn it and you can't be taught it. I don't think that if you are not a funny person, you can fake it.
Every little thing that people know about you as a person impedes your ability to achieve that kind of terrific suspension of disbelief that happens when an audience goes with an actor and character he's playing.
When you're working on a creative thing, everyone has an idea, and they're pushing it. The first time you work with anybody, you have to get comfortable with the way another person pushes hard for what they want.