Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I would say that I am a poor Christian; I'm not a believer. It was this idea very early in my life that life on Earth, nature or man could not be a creation of a merciful God.
Actors need bricks to play with, and in fact we rejected all the improvised fragments we had made without a plan. Improvisation without a plan is like tennis without tennis balls.
I sit there pouring out my woes year after year, coming up with one enormity after another about my mother and the way she let me down; but it doesn't make me any the less fearful.
Only a fool does not fear actors, but you can't beat them, and if you can't beat them, join them, as they say. As I've got older I've become very interested in that part of the work
Only a fool does not fear actors, but you can't beat them, and if you can't beat them, join them, as they say. As I've got older I've become very interested in that part of the work.
I think that sexuality is the part of human beings that is closest to nature. And nature is dangerous somehow, yes, if you put nature against civilisation, nature is definitely a threat.
I think it's important that we all try to give something to this medium, instead of just thinking about what is the most efficient way of telling a story or making an audience stay in a cinema.
I'm happy that I'm alive. I feel like someone coming back from Vietnam, you know; I'm sure that later on I'll start killing people in a square somewhere, but right now, I just feel happy to be alive.
My films are about ideals that clash with the world. Every time it's a man in the lead, they have forgotten about the ideals. And every time it's a woman in the lead, they take the ideals all the way.
If I made a musical in the beginning of my career, it would have been crane shots and tracking shots and people coming out of cakes and whatever, but these techniques are something that I've left behind me.
If I made a musical in the beginning of my career, it would have been crane shots and tracking shots and people coming out of cakes and whatever, but these techniques are something that I’ve left behind me.
Evil gives you far more strings to pull. But I must say that I have never been interested in the psychology of evil, not in the slightest. Perhaps I'm not interested in evil, but in the dark sides of human beings.
There is no creative expression of artistic value that has ever been produced by ex-drunkards and ex-drug-addicts. Who the hell would bother with a Rolling Stones without booze or with a Jimi Hendrix without heroin?
I'm fighting against my will to control. I think that is what I am doing. I would like to accept things in life, in all matters of life I would like to accept, but it's so difficult. I think we all have this struggle.
The risk is that you furnish the project with new suggestions to try and freshen it up; it's not always beneficial. You risk betraying the original intention with the story, forgetting what it is you really want to portray.
I am crazy about time cuts. I have a theory that the audience tie everything together so they don't see time cuts but the time cuts give us the possibility of jumping in time, which means a psychological evolution can be cut down.
One of the things that got me thinking during therapy is that they say that fear is only thoughts, and nothing will happen because thoughts will never be real. And my thesis, or joke, in film Antichrist, is that they really do become real.
I am crazy about my own films. The films I've just made I'm crazy about them. But then I don't see them for many years. It's like when you get a new child you're very crazy about this child but then after a few years you're like, "what was its name again?"
I'm very proud of being persona non grata. I've never been that before in my life, and that suits me extremely wellI'm known for provocations, but I like provocations when they have a purpose. And this had no purpose whatsoever. Because I'm not Mel Gibson. I'm definitely not Mel Gibson.
I can't tell you why I choose stuff, it's really something I don't analyse. The only thing I can say is that a film has to demand to be made, I don't have a plan of what films I'm going to make. The only thing that I know now is that I'm not too crazy about doing things again that I've been into before.
The cognitive therapy that takes place in the film Antichrist is a form of therapy that I have used for some time, and it has to do with confronting your fears. I would say that especially the part of the film that has to do with therapy is humoristic because people who know about this form of therapy would know that the character is more than a fool.
I think working with actors is a little bit how a chef would work with a potato or a piece of meat. You have to kind of have a look at the potato or the piece of meat and see what kind of possibilities are in the ingredient. I know I'm using the wrong metaphor. I think my job is to see what potato is there and from there, just work under their conditions.
True values entail suffering. That’s the way we think. All in all, we tend to view melancholia as more true. We prefer music and art to contain a touch of melancholia. So melancholia in itself is a value. Unhappy and unrequited love is more romantic than happy love. For we don’t think that’s completely real, do we?…Longing is true. It may be that there’s no truth at all to long for, but the longing itself is true. Just like pain is true. We feel it inside. It’s part of our reality.
It’s the opening of Manderlay in Cannes, and I’m sitting next to this guy who’s writing for a tiny fictitious French paper called ‘On the Sunny Side,’ and he’s writing a review on the film, and he’s obviously bored. Then he tells me about all the cars he owns, and how rich he is, and all these things... So, at a certain point, he says, "So what do you do?" Then I take out this very strange hammer we have in the Danish building business, and I say, "I kill." And then I kill him. It is as stupid as it sounds.