Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I like movies about women behaving badly, because women behave badly just like men, and we're not always adorable and cute about it.
I'm interested in the feeling of getting to zero after a play, like you're never going to do it again. That's a really scary feeling.
You keep learning how to let go and to live the life that you actually have, as opposed to the life you thought you were going to have.
I always feel like a vague failure in L.A. - it always makes me feel like I should somehow be different than I am. And I don't know why.
Movies are now more often watched on the small screen anyway. But at least for me, what got lost in that is the difference in the medium.
I think structure is so deep in us. We put it in stories we tell our friends or in emails we write. We want it. It's how we create meaning.
There are a million little things, but one of the best ways to get to know characters is to just put them in situations and see what they say.
Nobody knows what you have in you until you've done it, so I just keep pushing those boundaries, and I figure it will all come out in the wash.
From Rebecca Miller, I took the idea that the director needs to arrive every day an hour ahead of everyone else and walk through the entire day.
For Mike Mills, I learned that having dance parties and crying with your cast does not make you a weak director, it makes you a strong director.
I sound like an old man when I talk about the Internet, but I am actually worried about what it's doing to our brains and our sense of connection.
I'm all for the banalities of life and humiliation and everyday tragedies, but I also think people have big moments, and they have bigness in them.
Using the energy in a scene can really cut the fat off of something and streamline it. It can make it work for you and activate it for you in a way.
I was serious about ballet for a long time, but my mom got me into tap and jazz and modern and hip-hop, and I was one of those over-lessoned children.
I feel like most people aren't either/or, they're both/and. You're both magnanimous and petty. You're both kind and cruel. You're never just one thing.
We would go down to Riverside, California, which is very poor now, but that's where my grandfather grew up. He grew up during the Depression in Riverside.
I love big, sprawling movies where there are too many characters, and people get introduced halfway through, and you're like, 'Wait, who are these people?'
Writing on my own versus co-writing kind of is the exact same thing because we don't sit in the same room when we write. We're always writing alone anyway.
I think in general with micro-budget films right now, it's rough. The economy is rough. I think that affects everyone from big filmmakers to tiny filmmakers.
One of the things that happens when you write characters - and maybe this is my own sentimentality - is that I always find I have an instinct to protect them.
I can say I'm a relationship person, and I like relationships. I think I also like relationships because then you don't have to date because dating is horrible.
When I graduated from college, I thought that I would probably never be an actor because it seemed like everyone was big by the time they were 20 or not at all.
I'm just a relationship girl. I fall in love and I usually have long relationships. I like getting to know people well and having substantive, long relationships.
Getting bad reviews or doing something thats not great is also really good for you as an actor. It also makes me feel as an actor that Ive earned my stripes a bit.
Getting bad reviews or doing something that's not great is also really good for you as an actor. It also makes me feel as an actor that I've earned my stripes a bit.
When you're writing a screenplay, it's like you're dreaming the film for yourself again and again and again until it becomes almost like a memory before you make it.
I always have a soft spot in my heart for New York designers and independent designers, people who are doing the fashion equivalent of what I'm trying to do in film.
The transition from tiny movies to less tiny movies to really big movies has been actually quite seamless in a lot of ways as far as my experience of acting in them.
I think it's really hard to work in a city where you live too, because I get so absorbed with the movie that I become a bad friend and a bad participant in my own life.
I like people who love books and movies and art and want to talk about it all the time, because that's basically what I want to talk about. Intellectuals that are funny.
If you're with one person, then you don't have to meet other people. It's like when you're acting in a movie, you don't have to audition for other movies. I prefer that.
I think it's a great tragedy of childhood that you only really appreciate it once it's done: it's very hard to feel appreciative of the gifts you have until you're gone.
I think the problem with growing up and idealizing self-destructive artists is that you only see the beauty they created rather than all the pain that went along with it.
I like acting and things when I like the writing. If I don't like the writing, I don't like acting. I think in some ways everything starts for me from the place of writing.
I lived for two years with six girls in an apartment that was built for three people, and it had no heat. We would sleep in our coats and in sleeping bags. And it was great.
Having health insurance made me feel like a real person. Up until then, it felt like I was getting away with something, and if three things went wrong, it would all fall apart.
Sometime female characters, especially in the genre of something that people consider rom-com, make mistakes in a cute way or they're a mess in a way that's palatable. I like that.
One of my favorite things about Telluride is because it's so small, the directors are really there for each other. You look at another director, and they feel the same thing you feel.
Working is not instantly rewarding. It's a long process, and it's much easier to just feed whatever dopamine cycles exist in your brain in instant gratification ways. I get it; I do it.
When I was a kid, I used to do my homework in the living room, where there was a picture window. I was hoping that someone would walk by and see me looking very studious in my living room.
I think being attracted to mistakes is one of the things that film can capture in a way that theater can't. Film can capture a moment of spontaneous life that will never be captured again.
Specifically with directors I'd worked with, and even some that I haven't, they were all incredibly generous with me, having really long conversations about what they felt was useful as tips.
There's a style in modern dance right now called Release Technique. It's based on a feeling of falling and catching yourself, and I thought it was such a good metaphor for the way life feels.
I wouldn't call myself 'into the DJ scene.' I have friends who are DJs, like James Murphy. I was really into the DJ scene at his wedding. But generally, I'm not at the clubs. I've never been to a rave.
I've made so many films in New York. There was an assumption I think a lot of people had that I am a New Yorker, that I am from New York, and I always felt like nothing could be further from the truth.
I feel like, when I play characters, I create a space in myself that feels like the character and that doesn't go away. Somehow, you carry that with you. You let it go, but a little piece of it remains.
I love shooting in New York because I love the city. Ultimately, I like doing it there and the city is important to the story, but it can be hard to shoot where you live too because it is so all-absorbing.
For me, the French new wave is Truffaut and Rohmer. Godard I sometimes have trouble with because he's very much of a director's director. I feel Truffaut is such a humanist, and I always go in that direction.
Whenever you work with someone who you idolize, you realize... he's just a person trying to make a movie as best he knows how. And that doesn't look so different from other people trying to do the same thing.
I thought movies were handed down by God. I knew that theater was made by people because I saw the people in front of me, but movies seemed like they were delivered, wholly made, from Zeus's head or something.