Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
People never know what they want, though everyone says they do. If they did, nobody would ever be surprised.
I love the idea of anthropomorphizing machines. I love the idea of taking technology and giving it a personality.
When there's an authentic mystery, as opposed to just a question being asked, that's what makes you lean forward.
I try to push ideas away, and the ones that will not leave me alone are the ones that ultimately end up happening.
I think that the success of the film is as much about it being something that families could share as anything else.
I've just been lucky to work on things that I felt would be cool to see. It's not that I had a strategy or anything.
I'd love to do a movie where the monster is human, where the issue is not otherworldly, or horror or science fiction.
I love working with the right actor, and if the right actor happens to be unknown, that should be allowed, too, I think.
Robotics are beginning to cross that line from absolutely primitive motion to motion that resembles animal or human behavior.
What I'm still grappling with and learning how to do is to be looking and thinking cinematically, having come from television.
When I was a kid going into the movies, you weren't force-fed information everywhere you looked about what the movie was going to be.
We used to have more references to things that we pulled out because they almost felt like they were trying too hard to allude to something.
I feel like in telling stories, there are the things the audience thinks are important, and then there are the things that are actually important.
I was just like, "I want to make a decent 2-D movie." I was so worried that, instead of being a decent 2-D movie, it would have been a bad 3-D one.
All the times I've been lucky enough to be a part of a show that's actually gotten on the air, it's always that same mixture of excitement and utter fear.
Withholding things in a story is no good if you aren't building to something substantial. It becomes foreplay without the main event, and no one wants that.
I think when you're 10 years old, it's too much to see something with the threat of death in every episode. Kids are better left naive about certain things.
All I know is that I've made some big screw-ups, and I've done some things that have done all right. I just keep trying to learn from the mistakes I've made.
I was more of a Star Wars kid, actually. I always thought Star Trek was a lot of talk, and it felt a little self-important. It was hard for me to get into it.
Obviously with the Internet and increased access to other means of watching shows, the audience has dispersed and is all over the place and that is a challenge.
I think that even if you're wondering if two characters are ever going to kiss, drawing out the inevitability is part of the fun. Whatever the genre happens to be.
I'm not as optimistic as Gene Roddenberry was. I fall somewhere in the middle. But as a romantic, I like to think things are going to get bigger rather than worse.
I don't try and write strong female characters or strong male characters, I just try and write, hopefully, strong characters and sometimes they happen to be female.
I mean, my dad's a television producer, and I knew I could get a job as an assistant or a reader with one of his friends, but it wasn't exactly what I wanted to do.
Every hour that you spend doing something, even if you love it more than anything, you're not with your family. Every project that you take on, that's another choice.
What's a bigger mystery box than a movie theater? You go to the theater, you're just so excited to see anything - the moment the lights go down is often the best part.
Ratings have changed, viewer habits have changed and the options for the audience have grown enormously, but I don't think how you tell a story is fundamentally different.
On movies like Star Trek and Star Wars, you have so much that will be created or extended digitally, and it's a slippery slope where you can get lost in a world of synthetic.
As a director/writer/producer, all you ever want is to work with actors who make you look better, who make the work you do seem as good as it can be and even better than it is.
Stories in which the destruction of society occurs are explorations of social fears and issues that filmmakers, novelists, playwrights, painters have been examining for a long time.
Approaching any movie with a three in the title you know you are not going to get a political polemic. You are not going to get some sort of political statement or ultra-deep message.
But I'm grateful for everyone who would want to read a spoiler because it means that they care and want to see the movie. I know what it feels like, as an enormous Star Wars fan myself.
I'd like to use IMAX. The problem with IMAX is that it's a very loud camera. It's a very unreliable camera. Only so much film can be in the camera. You can't really do intimate scenes with it.
When you go to commercial, you want something to call the viewers back, and if you don't have a decent act out, the audience probably won't be there in the numbers you want when the show returns.
I do think there's something about the digital age that is increasingly dehumanising us. We're in this very weird place where we're being pulled into experiences that aren't really experiences at all.
Well, we knew that we wanted to tell a story that made bold choices, and one of those bold choices was meeting a storm trooper and seeing who this person was. That's something that had never been done.
When you work on something that combines both the spectacular and the relatable, the hyperreal and the real, it suddenly can become supernatural. The hypothetical and the theoretical can become literal.
I'm working on the Star Wars script today and the people in my office have covered up all my windows with black paper. I guess they wanted to make sure no one could see what I was doing. It seems rather extreme.
I have no style. There are certain people who just have a visual sense that defines their work. You could probably watch 30 seconds of anything they do and you'll know exactly who directed it. I don't have that skill.
The Internet now provides an immediate and very clear consensus of what it is that the audience is experiencing. It's something that you should never let lead you, and yet at the same time, you should never ignore it.
I do feel like no matter what you're doing, whether it's music or writing a play or a poem or drawing a picture or painting something, that you're speaking to what is it you want to express, what is it you want to see.
When I was a kid, among the other embarrassing things I would do, and there's a list of stupid things, but I would make these dumb comedy tapes. I would often make prank phone calls, but I would also do it with friends.
We're always pitching ideas and being told "no thank you." No offense taken, because I would so much rather be told the truth that they're not interested and be able to find the right show for that network down the line.
You know, we've got to this place, where you go to a movie for one particular surgical fix. So, it's like, I want the pulse-pounding action, or the insane falling-off-my-seat comedy, or the devastating, heart-breaking drama.
Making movies was more a reaction to not being chosen for sports. Other kids were out there playing at whatever; I was off making something blow up and filming it, or making a mould of my sister's head using alginating plaster.
Cameron Crowe is someone who I've admired for so long, and I've been friends with him for many years, and I've wanted to work with him so badly that I just never stopped bothering him about writing a script that would be for a pilot.
I remember being taught to read at a very early age. Like creepy young. I remember being in the crib, reading. My parents were very impressed. My reading speed, comprehension and overall ability has remained at that level ever since.
It's not often that I read about actors that I'm going to be meeting. I get to read articles about actors who were going to come in, so I get to see someone and say, "Oh, I read that I was going to see you. It's very nice to see you."
Maybe there are times when mystery is more important than knowledge. I realized that the white page is a magic box. Ultimately, the mistery box is all of us. Ubiquitous technologies. What comes next ? Mystery as catalyst for imagination.
I guess the idea of not wanting to choose to direct a film, for which I've not read a script. It's a tough decision to make without seeing any pages. That's not to say that I don't have all the faith in the world in the spectacular writers.