Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
My mother, Carole Hedges, was my world until she walked out of our house when I was 7. Actually, she didn't walk out. Alcohol walked her out.
I grew up going to funerals and visiting people in nursing homes. I'm not as afraid of dealing with the dying as maybe some other people may be.
I want to make a series of films of contemporary America that feel urgent and deal with sometimes-topical matters, but hopefully in a universal way.
So much of life's dramas, good and bad, play out against family and so it's really inspiring for any number of stories in all the fields I write in.
There are very few topics where I can imagine that you might not find humor. And I was stunned at how much weird and dark humor there was when my mom died.
I can go years without going to Los Angeles, but I think my living in Brooklyn is critical to my continuing to have a fairly happy life in the film industry.
The greatest love I believe... the greatest love I have is for my children, but I think the greatest love probably universally is a mother's love for a child.
Everything good in my life can be traced back to my mother's sobriety. She showed me that broken people can - with the help of others - turn themselves around.
I grew up going to church every Sunday and my mother was a drug and alcohol counselor, so both of my parents' lives have been about helping people at times of crisis.
There are so many films I lean on and look toward and return to that give me some guidance on how to keep moving in the world, and that's what film does, at its best.
Pieces of April' was going to be a 3 to 7 million dollar film and we had three entities, two studios, and one wealthy man and they all backed out. It was quite a blow.
My mother's sobriety - that's when I found the theater, that's when I moved from being a basketball player to being a musician, to being an actor, to then being a writer.
Well, it made perfect sense that I originally wanted to be an actor because every Sunday, we walked into church and we acted like we were the happiest, most together family.
People are usually pretty hungry after a funeral. I guess it's because we all realize that time is running out and we better eat all we can. Please don't mention that to my mother.
And for better or worse, a story like 'Pieces of April' is the kind of story I'm supposed to tell. The kind of story that makes you laugh as much as possible but also breaks your heart.
I've always written for actors, and if you want to write for good actors, you have to write parts that are surprising, that are human, and that allow them to go to a wide range of places.
My formative years were all shaped by a mother who was very sad and had a drinking problem, while my father was lonely and angry. He was an Episcopal priest and raised four kids on his own.
When I go home to Iowa, people assume I live in this very big anonymous place where no one knows each other or wants to. Truth is, I know my neighbors better in Brooklyn than I ever did in Iowa.
I try, in my films, to normalize things that maybe 20 or 30 years ago a film would have been about. 'Guess Who's Coming to Dinner' needed its own film, but now blended families you see all the time.
In a cement park across the street is this giant sculpture. It is a giant umbrella frame lying on its side. It's green. Stand under it, during a rainstorm, you'll still get wet - that's why it's art.
I'm looking, often, towards younger people, listening to how they're working, at least they're trying, and some of the old greats, too. Just to try to remain relevant and off-balance, but hungry and eager.
When I did 'Gilbert Grape,' Lasse Hallstrom let me be on the set with him and in the editing room and in the casting sessions and so on. And so I got a firsthand, rather intimate, high-pressure look at how to make a film.
When I was a young lad just out of college at the North Carolina School of the Arts, I directed several plays that I wrote. It was essential theater, meaning we had no money, so our set may be six stools and two chairs and eight cream pies.
I would hope that people might view their fellow beings, all beings, with more empathy, more compassion, with a desire to understand. Even if they can't know why people are the way they are, to understand that they're probably that way for a good reason.
When you have an intimate encounter with mortality as my family and I did with my mom's death, I took a long look at my life and I asked myself what was the one thing that I hadn't done that I had really wanted to do. And it was to write and direct a film.
I grew up in a very loving but very broken family, and I suppose that's why I'm drawn to telling stories about well-intentioned people who are doing their best - but are not always successful - in figuring out how to maneuver through this complicated, bumpy and broken world.
Well, because my films are really about how people interact with each other, and the complexity, and the nuance, and the surprise of those moments I try to create a safe enough space that allows the actors to operate from their own instincts. My direction is more suggestions, prompts or questions.
I once heard a story, it's probably apocryphal, but I love the notion. That a car had flipped over and the baby was trapped underneath the car and the mother was thrown from the car. Then the mother lifted up the car to pull her child to safety. And I believe that my own strength comes from whom and what I love.
There are sections of the film that I don't love. There are moments that really lift and elevate, and then there are parts that feel clunkier to me. But the totality of 'Harold and Maude' is so much greater than maybe other films that are more perfect or look more beautiful or handle every moment more exquisitely.
I'm the lucky father to two young men. When any of your kids, and your parents feel this way about you, clearly, when your kids find what they love to do and they throw themselves into it, and they find joy in the doing of it, and it's actually work that's honorable, and, you know, all of those things, it's a great feeling.
GOOD AS NEW was born out of the idea of writing a play where the stakes were high and the collisions were of a verbal nature. Also I wanted to write a play where people were smarter than I was, and more alive than I feel normally. I became interested in the idea of characters who would surprise me. I guess one could argue that nothing comes out of you that wasn't within you to begin with, but maybe there are ways to trick yourself into becoming more an observer or an advocate for the characters.