Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I've always felt that I wanted to make a Marvel film... I just want to make sure I'm not making an episode.
Independent films are really the best ones out there. They're the most original stories, and they're very good.
The ridiculous events in everyday life are often overlooked - people don't recognise it as potentially cinematic.
Basically, the big studios and companies distributing your movie just take a big cut of profit for making posters.
I think I'm a better filmmaker than actor, so I already know that. That's OK. I can handle not being a famous actor.
I've become more like water, I'm more relaxed and I'll say, "Okay, let's just completely change it and do it that way."
I've been on a lot of film sets, and I've always promised myself I wouldn't create a set where people dread coming to work.
Indigenous people in films, it's all, like, nose flutes and panpipes and, you know, people talking to ghosts... which I hate.
Anyone who has a parent can relate to this idea of not quite understanding who your parents are or making up stories about them.
Visually, I'm always considering shots and composition quite a lot, and I love putting art into films, and I do a lot of the art.
You have to let go of the control and allow things to develop. You need to have a flexible attitude, especially working with kids.
I don't have any room in my heart for that character [Kevin McCallister ]. I like the actor [Macaulay Culkin], but the character, no.
Shooting a movie should be fun! It's not a real job. It can be hard, but at the end of the day, we're dressing up and playing pretend.
Short film: you can be poetic and you don't have to answer anything. You can make whatever you want. You have creative freedom with short film.
I think I did not like him [Corey Feldman] in Goonies. He's kind of a similar character in Stand By Me isn't he? Well I liked him in Stand By Me.
I've always been a relaxed person on set, but I think the main thing is I think about it from an editing point of view way more than I did before.
My favorite was 'The Lost Boys.' Corey Haim wore this trench coat, and I made my mum buy me a trench coat. I wore it to school, to primary school.
I come from a big extended family, so it's very normal to be around babies for us, but when it's your own, it's a very different experience for us.
People overcoming the odds is actually a really important part of humanity, and I don't think we kind of get to celebrate that as much as we should.
I'm not very proud of coming from a place that everyone thinks is this pure green country whereas, in reality, all our lakes and waterways are poison.
I really didn't want to be boxed into becoming a certain kind of film-maker - becoming the Maori story film-maker because I had made those short films.
In a couple of years I think it [sequel to What We Do] will come out as a script and we'll shoot that. Or maybe it will just come out as some t-shirts.
I'd loved 'Iron Man,' you know, with a passion. I thought that was the most fresh, cool thing, in terms of superhero movies, that I'd seen in a long time.
I constantly remind myself that there are terrible movies out there. I try to watch them, some of them, to give myself an understanding of what not to do.
I have to keep reminding myself that I was hired for a reason and one of those reasons is because of the stories I tell and the films I've made previously.
I've never been a guy who was anal about housework. A typical Wellington flat when I was flatting was a warehouse with, basically, sheets hung up for walls.
I really love him [Jack Gleeson as Joffrey in Game of Thrones] - I love watching that character. It's quite phenomenal how people love to hate that character.
Most of my films - if you look at the tone, apart from 'Shadows,' which is straight-up comedy - the tone is a mix between comedy and pathos, and I really love that.
Within the family unit, you have people you grew up with who are supposed to be your brother, father, or your mother who are almost like strangers and acquaintances.
I never wanted to be a filmmaker. I still, sometimes, think I got sidetracked by this, like this is a tangent. My main thing was painting; I was just going to do that.
Films that are easy to sell happen to be the worst films. Look at the poster for 'Wrath of the Titans' and 'John Carter': they're exactly the same. You could switch titles.
I might revisit - I like the idea of doing something else with [Hunt for the Wilderpeople characters]. But also I get bored of doing the same thing again. I just get bored.
With some actors, you can tell, just from their different backgrounds and their different approaches to working, they would have just a natural conflict, just a sort of friction.
I really like arcade games and like the '80s and early '90s kind of games, just because there's a real kind of naivete to them, but there's like a real inventiveness to it as well.
I wish I was less good-looking and more unpopular. Then I could get into politics and use my pent-up resentment about being ugly and unpopular to systematically destroy the country.
At the end of the day, the reality is we're all losers, and we're all uncoordinated. We're the worst of all of the animals on earth, and there's something quite endearing about that.
Sundance felt like a natural fit. I love coming here, and I do think that this festival suits my films rather than most of the festivals I've been to. I'm not going to Cannes, you know.
'Eagle vs Shark' was about keeping myself sane. I wanted to go back to my comedy roots with people I trusted and had worked with before and do something low-budget and more experimental.
I distinctly remember watching Annie when I was very little and thinking 'I don't like this kid.' In fact I think I remember thinking 'I don't like any of these kids.' That's all I remember.
If someone asked, 'What are your films like?,' the best I can come up with is that they're, like, a fine balance between comedy and drama. And they deal mainly with the clumsiness of humanity.
I did roles that I hated, and there were roles that were detrimental to my acting ability. There were roles that I was always doing that were always the comic relief... it was destroying my soul.
You realise that there's nothing more endearing than people who are desperately trying to be liked or trying to be the hero, you know? Who also probably just need a hug or want to impress their dad?
My favourite kind of comedy comes from the awkwardness of living, the stuff that makes you cringe but borders on tragic - that is more interesting to me. It resonates; it comes from emotional truth.
I think something that every actor wants, whether they've done four movies or forty movies, is they want to find the work interesting. You want to come to work and think this is going to be a challenge.
I don't think there's much tolerance for people who are a little different or withdrawn or quiet. They always seem to be the ones who stick out the most, the ones who want to just shy away and withdraw.
I come from a country whose idea of masculinity is quite extreme, and I've grown up around a lot of that energy. I've been part of that a lot. And it's very draining; it's quite tiring trying to be macho.
There are lots of parts of filmmaking that I don't like. At the end of the day, especially on features, the film turns into a commodity. You have to play this entirely new game I'm very uncomfortable with.
To me, spending millions of dollars recreating the world's sadness with actors and props and sets - it seems like a kind of arrogant waste of money... Unless, that is, it's a film about an historical event.
I've always said that, first and foremost, I make films for New Zealanders. They're my target audience. Then after that, if people appreciate my stories from outside this country, then that's an added bonus.
A big part of the humor is in identifying with the tragic elements of the film. The New Zealand sense of humor is very dark. Our films are usually very dark and it's always someone being killed. Usually a child.