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I mean obviously we're all dealing with a lot more strangers due to the web. I'd say it has more to do with the quality of interactions. When you're physically interacting with someone, it forces you to be more present and probably a little more uncomfortable. You have to tolerate being outside the comfort of your own home.
Our film society back home is so different from here. Making a movie is universal. Directing a movie is universal; it's a universal language. It's just figuring things out and understanding the codes and how the system of Hollywood compares to that of Norway. We don't even have agents. There's no studio system, no managers.
I cannot believe that violence depicted onscreen actually causes people to act out violently. That's oversimplifying the issue. If somebody commits a violent act after seeing violence in a movie, I think the question that needs to be asked is: would that person still have committed the act if he had not seen a violent film?
The way we work at Pixar is we write the script, but then we quickly move on into story reel, which is basically like a comic-book version of the film. And then we do our own dialogue and music and sound effects, all in an effort to be able to basically sit in the theater and watch the movie before we shoot it, essentially.
One of the songs that stayed in my head that I really considered a lot was an old folk song called 'John Brown' - not the abolitionist John Brown, but the one that Bob Dylan has covered and sung before. It's about a boy coming home from the Civil War, or maybe World War I even, and about his Mother seeing him all destroyed.
Television, particularly as it becomes more and more serialised, comedies no longer have to tie the stories up neatly within 20-plus minutes. 'Arrested Development' had evolving storylines, as did both versions of 'The Office.' We're seeing that more and more. That allows it to be really, whatever the tone, almost literary.
I'm always open. I try not to have a closed mind. In fact the only reason why I'm able to continue to make films since 1986 is I have been adaptable. If I weren't flexible I sure wouldn't be making films this many years as I've been doing it. I've been making a film a year almost since 1986 and that's hard. That ain't easy.
If you have a career like mine, which is so identified with Hollywood, with big studios and stars, you wonder if maybe you shouldn't go off and do what the world thinks of as more personal films with lesser-known people. But I think I've fooled everybody. I've made personal films all along. I just made them in another form.
I've often been accused of, 'Oh the movies looked good but there's no story,' but I disagree with that in theory, and '9' is a perfect example for me because the feel, the texture, and the look of that world, and those characters, is the story. That's a major component of why you feel the way you do when you're watching it.
It was a weird reaction to 'Batman Returns,' because half the people thought it was lighter than the first one, and half the people thought it was darker. I think the studio just thought it was too weird - they wanted to go with something more child- or family-friendly. In other words, they didn't want me to do another one.
I have a way of filming things and staging them and designing sets. There were times when I thought I should change my approach, but in fact, this is what I like to do. It's sort of like my handwriting as a movie director. And somewhere along the way, I think I've made the decision: I'm going to write in my own handwriting.
I've ended up as a filmmaker who really loves the movie part of movies. That time in my life was a big influence on the kind of movies that I ended up making. I always think I'm going to make a movie that's gritty and real, but then I make a movie that's like an opera. I fight it at first and then that's just the way it is.
In this type of cinema, whether working with actors or non-actors, as much as you do direct them, if you allow yourself to be directed by them, then the end result will be much more pleasing. The real and individual strengths of the actors is allowed to be expressed and is something that does affect the audience very deeply.
When I see an image in my head that compels me, where there's this mystery about what's going to happen next or could happen next, I'll be intrigued. There are so many scripts that you read, and you know exactly what's going to happen, and there aren't too many where you can't tell within the first 20 pages where it's going.
It does not feel any different being directed by a first-timer as long as I am convinced that the director is passionate about the film he or she is making. If you get a sense of their vision for the film and their aesthetics of your performance, then it does not matter whether you work with a new or an experienced director.
Southall Broadway, in west London, has been a constant part of my life from the day I arrived in England as a baby from Kenya in 1962. My parents rented a room in one of the terraces off the Broadway, and I've seen it change from an ordinary English high street to what is now 'Little India.' with a confident Asian community.
When I was younger, I felt it essential to see every movie ever made. Now I feel as though I've got to read every book, see every art show, watch every play and opera and concert and so on. It does not end, and of course there is truth in the old cliche that the more one knows, the more one realizes one knows nothing at all.
I have a strange fascination with the Midwest. I'm waiting to find out that my parents are actually from the Midwest. I grew up in Beverly Hills, up the street, and I just feel comfortable there. I've shot in Minneapolis, in Detroit, in St. Louis, in Omaha - they would say they're the Plains, not the Midwest - and I love it.
Most people are nostalgic in a way that they're fond of the past, but they still are happy that they are where they are now. You know, when you say, 'Oh, high school was this or that,' you don't want to go back. No matter how much you loved high school, you don't want to actually be back in high school. I certainly wouldn't.
Studios are often very nervous of things they don't recognize, by which I mean things that haven't been done before, and therefore, they take a really original idea, and they recognize the originality, and then they try and make it look like something they recognize. So they try to turn it into something far more procedural.
It's just a wonderful experience and it's fun when you make a film and people go to it to emote and in my picture you hear the audible sobbing and then you hear the audible laughter and then you see people leaving the theater with a little bit of spring in their step. It's just great to be part of one that lasts a long time.
We need policy change, and the most important thing people can do is to contribute and participate in the political process. We have to vote climate change deniers and people who will create subsidies for the fossil fuel industry out of office. We have to protest when bad decisions are being made about fracking or tar sands.
Doing a movie about Steve Jobs is just generally a provocative thing to do, whoever does it, and it begs a lot of questioning and skepticism only in that, what is this going to be? What am I going to be looking at? And curiosity as well. I think that's all positive in any film, because you want people to be curious about it.
I'm sad, upset, and disheartened with the trolling that happens on social media... At the end of the day, this whole homophobia is so disheartening and upsetting. And then they say, 'Why don't you speak about your sexuality? You could be iconic in this country.' But I don't want to be iconic anywhere. I want to live my life.
I go to therapy once a week, that helps a lot. I have a really supportive family. I have two little kids, I'm married, I live close to my parents, my brother and his wife. I don't socialize a lot. I work and I have my kids, basically. I'm just, I would say, with all false modesty aside, I'm ruthlessly efficient with my time.
Vertigo is probably my favourite Hitchcock film and probably one of my favourite films of all time. It's a film that I'm obsessed with. I saw it on its first release in vista vision, projected in vista-vision, at the Capitol Theatre in New York. That moment when the nun comes up in the end... it's just an extraordinary shot.
I'm a massive hater of 3D. I don't like it at all. For me, you go to a movie theatre and you want to be taken to a place and transported to a place and be in that environment, and I know 3D is meant to do that, but the effect for me is the reverse. I feel like I'm looking though muddy water, and I can't really see the image.
I feel like when you do things with such a small budget, it actually makes you be more creative... and allows you to concentrate more on the story and the characters. I think that there is something about dirty, gritty and raw filmmaking that makes it feel a little more natural and makes it easier to connect with the action.
People sort of accuse Tolkien of not being good with female characters, and I think that Eowyn actually proves that to be wrong to some degree. Eowyn is actually a strong female character, and she's a surprisingly modern character, considering who Tolkien actually was sort of a stuffy English professor in the 1930s and '40s.
There is some humor in Monsieur Lazhar and in all my other films, but this one I'll try to make a real comedy from start to finish. It's called Prescott Etc. because the name of the constituency is so long that everybody in the constituency just says Prescott Etc. I don't know if that's what it will be. It's a working title.
'Django' was definitely the beginning of my political side, and I think 'Hateful Eight' is the... logical extension and conclusion of that. I mean, when I say conclusion, I'm not saying I'll never be political again, but, I mean, I think it's like, in a weird way, 'Django' was the question, and 'Hateful Eight' is the answer.
To find money to make a film, you have to write maybe 50 pages to explain what you'd like to do, what the film will be, but everybody lies. Because he doesn't know what the film will be. Everybody writes 50 pages and sends it to a TV channel, a producer, to get money, but everybody lies. Or else your film is not interesting.
You can't expect perfection. It is important to sort of acknowledge some of our imperfections. I write them down. There's something about acknowledging mistakes and being able to put them down on paper; they become facts of your life that you must live with. And then, hopefully, you can navigate the road a little bit better.
Those who have experienced a great deal of violence or committed a great deal of violence themselves, those who are existing in their own world of sadness and malevolence, essentially those are the ones that are most prone to possession. You don't just walk down the street and suddenly you get possessed. It creeps up on you.
I've just always had a personal fascination with the myth of Abraham Lincoln. And once you start to read about him and the Civil War and everything leading up to the Civil War, you start to understand that the myth is created when we think we understand a character and we reduce him to a kind of cultural national stereotype.
It's people who you've seen that have given you a lot. In some ways, I felt they helped me psychologically because you see these people up on the screen going through torment and being on the outside, and somehow you relate to them, and it helps you get through life. It's a real honour and pleasure to then meet these people.
People say you never remember anybody who dies in movies, and it's true, you don't. You don't even remember people who disappear. Although the moment that it happens might be terribly sad and moving, five minutes later, if you're asked to remember that person, you go, "Oh right, yeah, yeah!" 'Cause you're just moving forward.
Stories have tangents; they open up and become different things. You can still have a structure, but you should leave room to dream. If you stay true to your ideas, filmmaking becomes an inside-out, honest kind of process. And if it's an honest thing for you, there's a chance that people will feel that, even if it's abstract.
As collective consciousness goes higher and higher, all the differences in the world will be appreciated more and more. A definition of peace is unity in the midst of diversity. Or you could say happiness, love, and peace in the midst of all diversity. All the differences would be appreciated fully in the light of this peace.
For documentaries, I think streaming plays an amazing role, but it's a problem when the one service you initially relied on to have an incredible buffet - 'Come and see a lot of world cinema, and the lives of ordinary people as well' - all of a sudden is narrowed down until it's just gladiator after gladiator - and bloodlust.
I feel like the job in editing is to let the movie tell you what it is. So again, it's like sculpture. You just start taking away, you add a nose here, you cut off, like, the side of the cheek over here in the crease, and you have a face. But it really reveals to you what it means to be over time, and if you have enough time.
I chose 'Mr. & Mrs. Smith' specifically 'cause I had just made 'The Bourne Identity' and made a film that glamorized being an action hero, and I wanted to make the exact opposite. I wanted to make a movie that glamorized maintaining a marriage, and that made the action hero part seem easy and made the marriage part seem hard.
Horror is like comedy. Woody Allen's comedy is going to be very different from Ben Stiller's comedy which is going to be different from Adam Sandler's comedy which is going to be different from Judd Apatow's comedy. They're all comedy, but they're all very different types and you can enjoy all of them. Horror is the same way.
Basically, "Making a Murderer" chronicles a set of crimes committed in Wisconsin: Manitowoc, Wisconsin. The first crime is a miscarriage of justice. Steven Avery is convicted and sentenced to a very, very long prison sentence for the assault on a woman. And it comes to light through DNA evidence that he was not the assailant.
I loved making 'The Hunger Games' - it was the happiest experience of my professional life. Lionsgate was supportive of me in a manner that few directors ever experience in a franchise: they empowered me to make the film I wanted to make and backed the movie in a way that requires no explanation beyond the remarkable results.
I was a terrible student in high school and the thing that the auto accident did - and it happened just as I graduated, so I was at this sort of crossroads - but it made me apply myself more, because I realized more than anything else what a thin thread we hang on in life, and I really wanted to make something out of my life.
People often ask me if I feel discriminated against as a black female director. I don't. I'm actually offered a ton of stuff. But I only want to direct what I write. And I prefer to focus on black female characters. What's most important to me is to put characters up onscreen who are not perfect, but who are human and flawed.
The reason I do what I do is that I find that Asian community gives me an endless source of humour. When I entered the filmmaking business, my whole purpose was to promote and make us visible because we were very much on the margins. So, I wanted to make us mainstream. My work has helped to mainstream-ise the Asian community.
I don't ever want to go backwards, I quite like it. I like the freedom and I like the - What I set out to do was to make a big action-adventure movie that ticks all the boxes in terms of audience expectations and spectacle, and yet also make a very personal film and it feels like I've gotten away with that, I've managed that.
So Disney has their full support behind it, which is great, but again it's got to be the right story. It's got to be a script that's up to snuff and worth going back for. The idea's there, the ambition's there, the excitement's there; but we need to have all the pieces in place before they would ever pull the trigger on that.