Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I have to admit to not being the greatest technician, but stop motion animation gives me licence to create machines that wouldn't otherwise be possible - inventions that seem real and actually work.
Really what Brutus and Cassius do by assassinating Caesar, is open up a vacuum into which much more ruthless people run. Julius Caesar is an amazingly contemporary, resonant, politically astute play.
I think the Christ-myth stories make great stories, whether it's 'The Matrix' or 'Braveheart,' they all are tapping into some kind of deep myth in our DNA, and by myth I don't necessarily mean false.
I'm in awe of directors like the Coen brothers who can shoot their script and edit it, and that's the movie. They're not discovering the movie in postproduction. They're editing the script they shot.
I believe that the process could be fun, I just think that making movies is really tough. And it's stressful as it is, and I think that most of us got in this business because it's fun to make movies.
The darkest aspects of imperialism are still very much prevalent in many cultures around the world; hundreds of years later, and we have a collective responsibility to encounter the deeds of our past.
I've always been interested in photography. I remember when I was about 14, I spent an entire summer selling lottery tickets in some little booth so I could make enough money to buy an Olympus camera.
I'm not looking to be the King of Comedy, or the King of Hollywood. I just want to be able to keep making stuff that I'm into and have the opportunity to challenge myself with, wearing different hats.
Now, I don't know about my peers, but I get nervous - okay, I genuinely freak out - when an actor starts trying on a Southern accent. That's for Brits trying to find the easiest way to sound American.
Sometimes when you write something on the page, it can seem very funny, but when you act it out - and this happens to me a lot, actually - the melancholy of the situation becomes more front and center.
As I get on and films take four years to complete, I tend to have a hankering for very short projects so you can move on to the next idea. It's the ideas I'm interested in. What comes out of your head.
Real Super 8 is creepy. If you went into your grandmother's attic and found her Super 8 films and watched them, I don't care what was on them, there would be something a little creepy feeling about it.
I think in general I personally have a tendency to protect other people's feelings, and I've noticed that becomes a major hindrance to communication. It's better to just be honest, even if it's painful.
The world is a very troubled, very chaotic place. It's a very cold place. It's a very unjust and unfair place in many ways. [As a moviemaker] I have very limited ability to have an impact over all that.
I feel like so much of my life is about a conversation I'm having with myself. I do interact with other people, but often I'm more interested in what I'm learning in the relationship I have with myself.
I think we all have limitations, as directors. I don't care what the budget is, it's probably never enough money and never enough time. You figure it out. Sometimes the limitations bring more creativity.
I'm living the life that I wanted to live and I'm loving every little thing that I do. Fortunately, I have had a very, very charmed life. Wherever I've been, that's what I wanted to be doing, right then.
I don't have an agent. I don't take meetings or anything like that, so I don't really know what's out there. I'm not closed off to anything, but I'd just have to ask myself at every step if it's worth it.
We took Beowulf, the epic poem in Old English, and put it right together with John Gardner's contemporary retelling. If you bring it into today, we really feel that it has something very fresh to say now.
When I joined Granada - which, you don't want to start crying about these things, but Granada was a very, very hot place to be, it was my good fortune to be there at that time - the BBC was firmly asleep.
There seems to be an interest in connecting the history of the past to the present and asking whether things have really changed. Films like 'The Contender' and 'Bulworth' seem quaint compared with Trump!
Priests and pastors are probably the most stereotyped characters in film and television, and the reason why, I think, is that most people don't know one. Most writers who work in Hollywood don't know any.
You have to trust your own instincts about what is appropriate and what is not appropriate and trust your own feelings about what you can and can't show for yourself, and it'll be different for everybody.
I love changing. I hate it when people try to box me in to a relationship or in a work context. Any situation where I feel boxed in freaks me out. And I feel the need to reinvent myself or I'll get bored.
Eighty percent of the information we receive comes through our eyes. And if you compare light energy to musical scales, it would only be one octave that the naked eye can see, which is right in the middle.
I suppose when any movie dealing with politics is released, there is a knee-jerk assumption that it is propelled by a liberal agenda. That may be true most of the time, but not with 'Nothing but the Truth.'
I'm very jealous of actors that swoop in for 20 days, and then swoop back out. When you're a director, you're on that train for the next two years, so you best love it like you've never loved anything, ever.
As an actor and a writer, the anxiety about doing TV is that you start to feel like you get married to one tone or one kind of idea and you feel like you want to be able to express a lot of different things.
Most theater methodology is predicated on the idea of repeated actions. That's what you work toward. Having the actor repeat the same moment eight times a week. In a film, it's getting that one moment right.
I think it's absolutely fascinating that in Berlin the parliament can discuss actively the role of their soldiers in Afghanistan because is it still possible, literally, for a German soldier to take up arms.
I have seen that community and a close relationship with the land can enrich human life beyond all comparison with material wealth or technological sophistication. I have learned that another way is possible.
When reporters are in the business of obtaining hard facts that service the free flow of information, journalists should have a right to obtain that information without fear of personal ruin or incarceration.
I've never been a materialist; I've never been somebody who believes in only what we can see and measure. I continue to be a student of religious philosophy, and I continue to take those ideas very seriously.
During improvisations, I'll hear people bringing back up details from something I heard about at breakfast or something somebody was saying that they were thinking about, and it informs a rewriting of a scene.
I don't fear pain or failure anymore because I'm too grateful for the pains and failures of my past - they have made me who I am, and most of the good things in my life are a direct result of them in some way.
I like people that define their own values. I am much more interested in somebody who has their own definition of what they value, their own definition of what success is, their own definition of what love is.
As a moviemaker, I'm able to have a little impact on the socio-political landscape and to reach a large audience around the world. That inspires me. That is something I'm inspired by and it's what I inspire to.
My wife's an architect, so she definitely has a very high-risk artistic profession, and she gets the idea that you're really sensitive, you really care what people think, you have a low threshold for criticism.
The First Amendment is the First Amendment for a reason - our most cherished right. But it often creates muddy and uncomfortable situations, ones that are the source of great drama and national self-reflection.
At a deep psychological level, convincing young people that they will get the respect, admiration, love that they are looking for through consumerism is a manipulation of a deep human instinct to want to belong.
The best thing about improv is that no matter how bad your show is, it's only 30 minutes, and never exists again. The worst thing is no matter how good your show is, it's only 30 minutes, and never exists again.
For something to be completely evil is to be nothing. Satan has good attributes - intelligence, for instance - but they are corrupted. I cannot reconcile myself emotionally to alternative understandings of evil.
I'm not a dispensationalist - I don't believe in the Rapture. I think it's an unbiblical doctrine, and in North American Christianity, at least, it is the teaching that is the root of much of our subculturalism.
I love the comics so much, and I grew up reading Marvel Comics. And Doctor Strange is my favorite comic book character - probably, I think honestly, the only comic book I would feel personally suited to work on.
I believe that a large part of the training in the regional theaters is in imitation of the British style of acting. The British orientation is textual; they start from the language and work toward the character.
I like that confusion when people are speaking in the same language but still can't understand each other. It's also usually my experience of being in America - when I speak no one can understand what I'm saying.
I do like the idea of doing something different, maybe doing something that's more like a genre film. And there are certain actors that I'd like to work with that would go along with working with a bigger budget.
But I don't think there has ever been anything written on the nature of violent man as deep and as thorough as Shakespeare's Titus. I think it puts all modern movies and modern exploitations of violence to shame.
My life philosophy and personality has been driven by the fact that I am incapable of really understanding the future, on some level. I am in this moment. I take risks because I really don't think that far ahead.
In movies and TV, we tend to fall into tropes about how characters might get out of problems. But when you look at real life, you realize that there is a lot of drama of not being able to get out of the problems.