Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
You can be precious about something like 'Blair Witch' and say, 'How dare you approach it as a sequel or remake' or whatever, but its legacy was so tarnished by 'Book of Shadows' that someone had to come in and do something in the spirit of the original.
How can [actors] learn their lines and be honest in front of 30 people and all the lights? It makes me cry sometimes. I can't understand how they can be joking with me 30 seconds before, and 40 seconds later they're giving me all this incredible feeling.
I used to get off the bus, and there'd be a crowd around, you know, and I was thinking, 'God, I hope this is not for me.' And it normally was, and it was because someone said something to my sister, and the first she says is, 'Well, I'll get my brother.'
I tend to jot down moments, lines, interactions that don't really make any sense. I try and explain these scattered notes to my close friends, and they become more and more logical. I see screenwriting as a bit like a math equation which I have to solve.
The big difference is the size of the crew and the flexibility of shooting because of the size. I mean, it's crazy. So you can't improvise, you cannot suddenly do something that comes to mind, whereas in a small production you have much more flexibility.
You don't pay the same price for a Ferrari as you do for a Honda Accord. But for some reason, for movie tickets, you're asked to pay the same price for 'Avatar' as you are for some $2 million movie, which is kind of a weird thing when you think about it.
Most films that I do, whether successful or not, just fade away. They have their moment in the sun, then they are gone. 'Trainspotting' did not, and especially with journalists. So whenever I launched a new film, I'd end up talking about 'Trainspotting.'
You need contrast and conflict in order to tell a story. Stories need to have dark and light, turmoil, all those things. But that does not mean the filmmaker has to suffer in order to show the suffering. Stories should have the suffering, not the people.
And that is also what the movie's about, going beyond success, what is success 'cause I think success is misperceived as just a cake and it isn't. There is many things inside that success. There's a maturity and a heartbreak and sadness and broken glass.
I like to think that I differ from other interviewers in the sense that I hide my agenda more successfully, and I'm more open to hearing stuff that is surprising and unexpected. That I'm actually involved in an investigation, through monologue, at times.
There is a certain highlighting of issues, be it emotional, be it social, or simply an entertainment one: they can be written or directed by a woman differently, with a different voice. I feel that their voice needs to be given more stage and more space.
I do a lot of research and yes, do know quite a few police officers, friends of mine and my husbands. However, most of my books are researched based on Canadian laws or the laws of each country (ie: Mexico and USA) and I do my best to make them accurate.
The artist himself is actually the subject in everything after, say, 1900. Eventually, art becomes so removed from the community that you have to know about the artist before you can even look at the painting, because there is a conceptual idea going on.
No one will give you change. You have to work for it. You have to earn it not by screaming, but by working hard, by believing in yourself, by proving yourself. There are windows, but if you are radical, no one will talk to you. And that window will shut.
It's a fine line to find that balance: to show people enough to give them the promise of something unique, and something they want to see, but at the same time make sure that when they show up for the movie, they're surprised by what they eventually get.
Today the god hypothesis has ceased to be scientifically tenable, has lost its explanatory value and is becoming an intellectual and moral burden to our thought. It no longer convinces or comforts, and its abandonment often brings a deep sense of relief.
I love that first-time feeling that I can't build in myself anymore, where I can learn and emulate other filmmakers. Be it Ayan Mukherjee, Punit Mahotra, Karan Malhotra, Tarun Mansukhani or Shakun Batra, all of them have taught me something or the other.
That complacency and that willingness to give yourself over to a larger power structure is how civilizations destroy themselves. And I just hope people wake up from the slumber they've willed themselves to. Because we're really in a dark place right now.
Bath was dusty and a little shabby when we moved here. It did look its age and you felt its history in its streets and buildings and little alleyways. The sense of the past was palpable. There were some bad modern buildings but there was a patina of age.
I looked long and hard at third films in series to see if there were any good ones that I could learn from. And there weren't any that hadn't just gone off the train tracks by their third film. Until, that is, I got to the third 'Lord of the Rings' film.
I feel as though I have lived many lives, experienced the heights and depths of each and like the waves of the ocean, never known rest. Throughout the years, I have looked always for the unusual, for the wonderful, for the mysteries at the heart of life.
People who don't quite fit society, they are often kind of either under an awful lot of pressure or otherwise not acceptable to the mainstream and that tells us a lot about who we are. The people that don't fit are a great way of reflecting on all of us.
The thing about kids is that they don't have the broader perspective of what's happening on a national level. Anything that's going wrong in their world, they somehow assume is unique to them and they're somehow to blame. It turns into an issue of shame.
I'm stuck somewhere a small island in the middle of the Atlantic where I'm alone. Because in France, they're like, 'No, you're not like us, you're not a French guy.' And in America, they're like, 'You're not like us.' I'm really alone in my little thing.
It's advice I always give to directors when they're starting out: Take an acting class to really see what it feels like to be an actor. And I have always felt like one of my strengths as a director is that I share a language and a vocabulary with actors.
When you're writing a 25-minute episode that can be anything, sometimes you just start with a character, and you let them walk into the room. Then you let your instinct guide you. That's how we made art when we were 15 years old. And that's so fun to us.
Organizations like the CIA and the FBI are still kind of supermen, kind of SS troops: We're blond and the best and everyone else should be incinerated. They don't know right from wrong. That's what makes a satire of these government bureaus really funny.
The first dolly track was somebody who had the idea to put the camera on a boat on a canal. So the boat would move very slowly but steadily. So they would see all that surrounds you and you'd see the landscape changing slowly. So that was the first time.
I have female friends who work in all different mediums who I speak to at least once a week. It helps me so much to know that I'm not alone. I think that's the bare minimum you need to sustain yourself - some sort of context of other women making things.
I think I'd like to do a big movie with a strong female lead, whether or not she would be a superhero. I'm more interested in characters like Scarlett Johansson in 'Lucy.' I'm less interested in people with superpowers because I can't identify with them.
The amazing thing about cross-country is that they don't run indoors - I could put them in extraordinary environments. And it's kind of uniquely cinematic in that way, to be able to commit to the screen some things that people don't get to see too often.
Sometimes you do absolutely know there's something there. You feel it in your bones. I actually literally feel it on my skin sometimes. I do get goosebumps. There are times when you go oh God, that works that moment! But you find you take it apart again.
I knew that one day I would come to this point that I would make something so outrageous and so ambitious that... it'd be that Don Quixote feeling, that I'd have to tilt at a windmill. Sometimes you've got to do it. That's the only way you can do things.
I've grown up watching a lot of Western genre films on TV, and America is not just a country, but it's one of the most important countries in the world, and examining the process of how this nation came to be, it's an important thing, even for outsiders.
A couple degrees warmer would be good for humanity and planet, especially with more plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide in the air. [...] But a couple degrees colder would bring serious adverse consequences for habitats, wildlife, agriculture and humanity."
For sure, and we haven't found it yet. I understand why we have come to a time and place where we cannot touch the children at school for obvious reasons. I'm not that old, but back then some teacher would take our arm and squeeze it, and it was not fun.
What if a kid goes to school after seeing Kill Bill and starts slicing up other kids? You know, I'll take that chance! Violent films don't turn children into violent people. They may turn them into violent filmmakers but that's another matter altogether.
I always wanted to do a movie that deals with America's horrific past with slavery, but the way I wanted to deal with it is - as opposed to doing it as a huge historical movie with a capital H - I thought it could be better if it was wrapped up in genre.
My movies are painfully personal, but I'm never trying to let you know how personal they are. It's my job to make it be personal, and also to disguise that so only I or the people who know me know how personal it is. 'Kill Bill' is a very personal movie.
My journey to Sridevi started when I was preparing for my debut film 'Shiva.' I used to walk from Nagarjuna's office in Chennai to a neighbouring street where Sridevi used to live, and I used to just stand and watch Sridevi's house from outside her gate.
I'd be fine if there weren't film festivals, and you just made your films and didn't have to do anything from that point on. That would be really great, wouldn't it? I don't know. I'm in kind of an aloof time, where I'm not taking anything too seriously.
I am not an expert. That is someone else's job. If I were expert, the approach would be all wrong. It would be from the inside. I am a blunderer. I usually don't know what I am going into at the start. I go into the fog and trust something will be there.
My discussion is one that has gone all the way from Fistful of Dollars through Once Upon a Time in America. But if you look closely at all these films, you find in them the same meanings, the same humor, the same point of view, and, also, the same pains.
Anyone who has ever been privileged to direct a film also knows that, although it can be like trying to write 'War and Peace' in a bumper car in an amusement park, when you finally get it right, there are not many joys in life that can equal the feeling.
I've always been very hopeful which I guess isn't strange coming from me. I don't want to call myself an optimist. I want to say that I've always been full of hope. I've never lost that. I have a lot of hope for this country and for the entire world. . .
My mother has had breast cancer twice. And my mother has always been this very positive human being: a glass-half-full type. Like, when she was in treatment and feeling really bad, she would always talk about some nurse that was particularly nice to her.
I always talk about movies a lot beforehand, and then we would get there, and I'd say, "Let's play around and see how it goes." And they would do it, and I'd go, "Well, that was awesome." It was really - I don't know, it was really special to watch them.
Things that I grew up with stay with me. You start a certain way, and then you spend your whole life trying to find a certain simplicity that you had. It's less about staying in childhood than keeping a certain spirit of seeing things in a different way.
If you are referring to the characters of The Room, each character has a different personality which you can see very clearly on the screen. If you are referring to the actors, they give me different emotions, personality which represents human behavior.
Because you're delegated to a cook book recipe and you slavishly and pedantically rely on it while you're shooting and you're not relying on your creative instincts and you're not relying on something which brings life into movies and excitement into it.