Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I think there's a kind of elegance to it, to work within that framework where what you don't see is often more enticing.
One of the things I find very little of in America - and certainly not on Broadway - are plays with political attitudes.
I think the thing that is meaningful is when I can tell that someone's been affected by the movie or by anything I made.
I believe that if you really have a strong idea, you can say, "What do you think? Let's see how my idea plays off yours."
The fight to get a shield law barring the government from being able to jail journalists is itself a non-partisan battle.
Certainly you don't want to make something that nobody sees. It's not really about success, it's about sharing something.
People also don't understand how young the Panthers were - basically teenagers. And that they were over 50 percent women.
This sounds really craven on some level, but on some level, a lot of what I'm doing is trying to not do a typical TV show.
I am, in fact, Superman. Every morning I wake up and go into a telephone booth and change my costume, and then go to work.
And one thing about Mick Jagger is he keeps his eye very closely on not only where the dollars go but where the pennies go.
I definitely check my phone for texts a lot - like, 'Did anyone text me? Is anyone thinking about me? Does anyone love me?'
Race is always tossed into the mix. The unspoken idea is always that white people have a right to carry guns and bear arms.
The first time I went behind the camera was in 1993. I felt, 'This is my thing,' and I knew that someday I'd make a feature.
I was a huge fan of this band called Sparks. It was a pretty good inauguration to music, since their music is quite complex.
I call myself a playmaker sometimes - but that's just a word. I don't feel like I have to have a title or a job description.
The idea that all violence in movies is okay simply because it happens is bull. Directors and writers have a responsibility.
When black men started bearing arms, these people who we think of as being pro-gun are saying, 'We ought to change this law.
People sometimes seem surprised because often, you know, you know, there's a lot of tortured characters in the stuff I write.
That's to me what always is compelling about villains. I am much more interested in how they think than in what they even do.
It is cool to make a pilot because you get to do all the fun stuff, and then you get to leave when all the tough stuff starts.
I do have this belief that we all have a chance to be great, beautiful people based on how we are raised and our surroundings.
Cameras have really made people question the police. People, especially white people, are saying, 'Oh my God, we had no idea.'
Chickens are interesting individuals who have as much right not to be cooked and eaten as a dog or a cat or even a human being.
I'm a pretty hands-off director. I let people try things, and if it gets over-jokey, then I'll try and rein it in a little bit.
A performance can have amazing visuals and special effects, but it has to tell a good story, even if that story isn't original.
I love directing Shakespeare on film. It's fantastic that the actors would do exactly the same thing and be true to their part.
I don't have a desire to make films that have cardboard cut-out or Hollywood stand-in replicas of humans. I need the real deal.
'Commander in Chief' became a show not about why we should have a woman president but why we should not have a woman president.
I root for all movies, but I especially root for good comic book movies. It's the best, most interesting genre going right now.
Johnny Knoxville went from struggling to pay his rent to being on the cover of 'Rolling Stone' in the course of, like, a month.
If we had one person who could perfectly read minds we could solve a lot of problems in the world in a very short period of time.
Is an audience open to seeing a film that isn't what they expect when they see a film that's been adapted from a children's book?
Eating meat is not your personal decision, any more than, you know, whether somebody beats their child is their personal decision.
It would be great if all the fast-food outlets, slaughterhouses, these laboratories and the banks who fund them exploded tomorrow.
Actors don't need a lot of talk beyond the first few sentences. They may say they don't draw on their own life, but all actors do.
I don't know but maybe it's fair to say that some of the responsibility lies with the American people and not just on the leaders.
Nobody's born evil. I guess that's why we're drawn to violence. We're fascinated by it, but there's a moral in how you examine it.
We've all watched hundreds of movies from characters' points of view that are not our own. That's part of the gift movies give us.
Limitations force you to find the essence of what you want to say, which is one of the most important things to know for an artist.
I started as a writer; I started writing when I was little. The acting and directing was an outgrowth of my desire to tell stories.
I make films but I am trained as a designer. I come from this series of designers called critical designers, speculative designers.
Americans like the British kind of quirkiness and the strange accent. They find it kind of cute or something, with a certain charm.
Take a look at Mila Kunis. When you see her performance in 'Forgetting Sarah Marshall,' you see a beauty there, and also a sadness.
A lot of times, you have an idea, and all the things you are thinking about might fuel it. But that's not where the idea came from.
Who knows where the talent goes? Sometimes it goes where the money is. Sometimes I think writers are really interested in the glory.
In my films, I either want the music to be very subtle and very buried or just put it right out in front and be super blunt with it.
Since we've done that type of work [ voiceover], we know how isolating it can be, and we wanted to make the actors more comfortable.
The more that I work with people that I don't know, the more I invite somebody in who's potentially going to really hate being there.
An artist is an entertainer, number one - a storyteller who takes people someplace, who gives them what they didn't know they wanted.
I always aspire to that, where it feels like the film was made by the characters as opposed to the filmmakers. I try to be invisible.