Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
In the early 1990s, I was signed as a singer to the same label as Robyn. She was in her early teens, and I was in my twenties, so we didn't hang out, but our paths crossed so many times that we slowly got to know each other and became friends.
The ability of the press to print their stories without the government trying to get them to betray their sources is as essential to a free press as the ink it is printed with. Otherwise, who will hold accountable those who hold power over us?
Because my parents had given me tremendous respect, trust, and freedom as a child, I knew how to take responsibility for myself. If you're constantly being told "No, don't do that" or "We don't trust you," you can't develop that responsibility.
The point of remaking 'Straw Dogs' is not to replicate the philosophies of Sam Peckinpah at all. What made that film singular was the attitude that he brought to the characters. Oddly enough, that's the one thing that I really wanted to change.
If we're not compelled to gain a deeper understanding of good and evil, how can we make the world a better place? How can we find ourselves at the end of our lives and know that our lives were significant? Those things would be impossibilities.
If you judge everything by how photographically real it looks, then you're missing out on a lot of what art is about and what communication is. There are ambiguities in life, and that should be reflected in art, cinema, and storytelling, I think.
I used to be a businessman and I enjoyed what I did and I thought that it was socially useful. I don't have anything against business or private enterprise or capitalism per se, but I think that it is time to rethink the regulation of capitalism.
It's great to meet people in a setting where it's really conducive to hanging out and having fun. Most film festivals are really low-stress, and good times to hang out with buddies and talk about what you're working on and come up with new ideas.
Remember that the fans want to hear inside stuff about the series; they don't want to hear gripes and grouses about your personal life. What they really want to hear is how the series gets made, and how you interact with your fellow cast members.
Is it appropriate still for a German to have a gun? I only use that as an example of a country that's still deeply involved and engaged in the conversations about how to come to terms with the past. Certainly for that country, it's not forgotten.
The marketing of my movies is something I have no control over! I usually am shown things to give input beforehand. Some directors get really involved with that, but it's not what I do. I don't know anything about marketing; it's not my skill set!
I spent a little time in Germany as a schoolboy learning German, and it's a country I knew very well, spent a lot of time in. I knew the history very well. I've always wanted to do a piece of work about the post-war period, of one sort or another.
Emotions are messy and hard to figure out. Hard to know where you start and the next person stops. Even as an adult, that's a hard thing to know. As a kid, it can be really confusing, because it's all new and you're trying to sort of make your map.
Instead of feeling like there's two or three of us in this town of hostile crackers, I'm in a big church filled with people who believe the same thing I believe and the power of song is raising what we're trying to do, raising it up to the rafters.
There are different levels of scripting that we all use; I think I'm the most improvised of the three, and probably Andrew's the most written. But all of that is in pursuit of similar things, and I think that we kind of recognize that in each other.
I can't imagine making something that is made only to be scary. For me, the darkness and scary material has to have meaning attached to it, or I can't invest the time and energy it takes to write and script or make a movie. It has to mean something.
We're looking for a certain kind of realism or naturalism, and we go about it in different ways, but I think we're all striving for the same end result, which is to capture the patterns of conversations and how people interact in a very realistic way.
I don't want to force somebody to talk about sensitive subjects if they're not into it, but at the very least, even if that's happening off camera, it's allowing everybody to be on the same level, and creates an atmosphere on set that engenders trust.
Every now and then I have to teach directing. The thing about the theatre is that the most important thing you can do as a director is to make sure that everybody is in the same world - you have to create the world and make sure everyone buys into it.
My faith sometimes burdens me with the responsibility to think very deeply and long and hard about the choices I make creatively. There are projects I turn down because the material is too much a violation of what I believe. But that's true of anybody.
I do think there's a smaller audience that's looking for something that's a little more adult and a little more nuanced [than many Hollywood movies]. At the same time, I think everyone who's making movies hopes to appeal to the widest audience possible.
Homo sapiens Yuck You contemporary fools laugh at religious and political lies spewed by sociopaths, lies that tether you forever to poverty and mediocrity. Yet, when your ears come upon the truth, the facts of life, you hide your faces and cry, not able
They have no allegiance to Atlantic City whatsoever, other than nostalgia, and that doesn't pay the bills, ... The Miss America pageant has to do what it thinks best serves its interests, and if moving out of Atlantic City does, that's what it should do.
My mom was in education, and I remember reading in one of her books about multiple intelligences - this whole theory about how there are all these different ways you can be intelligent, like eight or 10 of them or something. And one of them is emotional.
I want to communicate with people, and I want to make something that works, and that people like. I'm never purposefully trying to be antagonistic or shocking or anything that would push an audience away. I'm always hoping to reach as many people as I can.
I've never been a puppeteer, I conceive and I write and I design and I direct. And not just puppets. I direct actors, I direct dancers, I direct singers, I direct films. I also direct puppeteers. I'm really a theatre maker, but there's not a word for that.
I'm a different writer now. You don't sit in a room with Sopranos creator David Chase and writer Terence Winter for four years and not learn something. And just watching the way the show was done, and watching the way that David encouraged the imagination.
One of the big themes - if not the big theme - of 'Mockingjay - Part 1' is the battle of the airwaves. I don't think teenagers really understand the role propaganda has in our lives in terms of politics, advertising, and the general manipulation of imagery.
By the time I hit college, my secret shame was the reason I was an actor was my own words sort of dried up. I stopped writing. I stopped being able to form my own vision. That's actually what my first feature is about - looking back at two different selves.
'Deity' will be a compelling and exciting thriller with complex and interesting characters. A neo-realistic style to story and images will take the audience deep into Calcutta's many different levels. A fascinating clash between American and Indian culture.
My interest in the comic goes back a long time, because I grew up reading comics, mostly Marvel Comics, and I always loved 'Doctor Strange' uniquely. It was the presence of the fantastical, the presence of the supernatural that was in it. The idea of magic.
The reality of any location in Britain being used in a TV program of a film is that something bad is going to happen! That's the nature of drama. Most of the things that get made or basically grisly detective shows about murders, accidents or medical dramas.
I've done a lot of movies that don't have any music in them, and I've always sort of had a kind of wary attitude about music because it can be so manipulative, and also because with pop music, I feel like everybody kind of has their own relationship to songs.
Stay open to as many new tools and think of as many ways you can to utilize them to your advantage. This not only includes equipment and hardware but also software or apps like Sun Seeker and social media outlets like Instagram and Twitter to build community.
I think back to the Modern Family pilot when we didn't know that Julie Bowen had a spotty party girl past, but that's something that we layered in, throughout the first season. That's just part of the fun of series television. You get to discover these things.
The really cool thing is all about being able to take your movie around and show it. It puts you in direct contact with people who are like-minded and interested in similar things. I think the film festival circuit has certainly helped to foster the community.
Some nights I lie awake at night thinking, 'What's going to stop someone from smashing a chair through my window and coming in the house at two in the morning?' It is very unnerving. It's a realistic scare, which is the worst kind of scare that you could have.
I'm very superstitious about going on other people's sets. You have to ask permission of the director; you shouldn't just turn up and skulk about in the background. It's very rude. You have to ask them personally. It's like a vampire being invited into a house.
I'd love for there to be a situation - a world in which that's just not even a question anymore. We are all filmmakers - different stripes, genders, sexual orientations, colors - and our work can be taken on its own terms. I'm really looking forward to that day.
I'm not standing above the audience trying to manipulate them as a puppet master or a trickster; I'm inside the story I'm writing and making and thinking about things very seriously and feeling very deeply at times, and trying to translate that into a narrative.
Work on your writing skills. Realize that Hollywood is an industry built to keep you out, and once you're in, it's designed to cycle you out - so you have to get up every day and work all day long to give Hollywood a reason to let you in, and then to keep you in.
I don't want to just add another DVD to the pile. So I think, 'Is this going to have an impact and some lasting value? Is it worth it for me to spend two years of my middle-aged life on this?' They're my criteria, and I think that's led me to more urgent projects.
Wallace and Gromit's contraptions are created purely for gags, but we all have the urge to invent - especially children. If they're bored, kids will make something from cardboard boxes, yoghurt pots, tape and elastic bands. Often, those constructions are the best.
I met Arcade Fire on their first record, 'Funeral.' I loved that record, and it was a record I was listening to while I wrote 'Where the Wild Things Are.' Those songs - especially 'Wake Up' and 'Neighbourhood' - there's a lot of that record that's about childhood.
I fell in love with movies as a kid. I had been making shorts and making TV and making commercials and it's such a difficult, weird process of trying to wing your first feature, especially if you're not going to go and just have a Kickstarter and do it on your own.
To me, this is from a Buddhist perspective or whatever, sometimes people who are working out their political beliefs, they can rage against the man, and yet at the same time can be oblivious to their own way of stepping on the foot of the person right next to them.
My colleagues and I have to constantly remind each other that we must keep our own view on the world while making films. With 'Chicken Run,' we learned how easy it is to be influenced by outside forces, but you mustn't lose the heart and soul of what you are doing.
The truth of the matter is, every film is imperfect. It's the nature of the beast. One of the things that people ask me all the time is, what's the difference between theater and film, and one of the biggest differences is, in the theater you always get another go.
The evil within the fantasy genre tends to be threatening to the heroes within the story, but not to the reader - or not to the viewer, in the case of cinema - and that's why I think it's more palatable and something that is more easily embraced for a lot of people.
I think it's important for anyone who takes cinema seriously not to limit yourself to just optimistic or happy movies. I think that's a problem. You've got to be willing to let the art of cinema take you into some darker places if you're going to make full use of it.