Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I really thought the process and what I'm used to doing on film would be different. I thought that because I wouldn't have the same amount of time, I wouldn't do all of the tracks that I like to do or the lighting that it takes. And then, I got there and realized that I don't know any other way. I just do all that stuff really, really fast and under a lot of stress.
Every time you recall a memory, you're basically making another copy of it and at that same point it is susceptible to new changes and adaptations. So, you know, if you remember from when you were, you know, in second grade and there was Christmas and you got a present from your grandfather and your mom was wearing a red dress, that may or may not all have happened.
I was interested in immigration and I wanted to use that in the film, not necessarily to talk about immigrants, although I wanted to do that, but to talk about ourselves through the eyes of an immigrant. The film takes place in the school and it tells us a little bit about who we are and where we're at, but through the eyes of someone who has a different background.
Everything in The Room, we did it the same way the big studios do it. The only difference is the budget and the actors. We put an ad in Back Stage West and in return we got almost 8,000 headshots from people who wanted to be in the film. We then do a process of selection and a rehearsal process after they are selected. The process of audition is very time consuming.
With Dawn I was afraid people would just think it's a B-movie and I didn't know what I was doing. That's really what I was afraid of. Like the subtlety of the movie they would miss. If the movie succeeds, it's that people understand the subtlety. That they're able to see past the conventions of what they think a movie is and go a teeny bit deeper and let it be both.
I do have commitment phobia, which I think is underlied by death anxiety. I feel that if you are in a relationship, there is a real genuine possibility of plateauing, and there is a possibility for a creative, emotional and spiritual death because of it. Only part of me feels this way, but it's enough to create an anxiety which makes me think twice before committing.
I basically made the movie from the crew's suggestions. For one scene, I wanted some kids' toys against the wall in Mikey's room, to give the scene texture, and we tried a field hockey stick. It looked really good to me, until someone had to say that in America, field hockey is more of a girl's game. Gradually I got tuned into the world - that happens on every movie.
I find most American films annoy me because their third act tends to be tying up loose ends and returning to moral values and killing the monster. I think most of the scripts I read to tend to go in that direction and I find that very, very unsatisfying. I want the stories to have loose ends and to pose some questions - or even say things that aren't too comfortable.
You never know how a film will play, whether it will be successful or not, or whether it will touch the audience. I always said to myself that whatever happens, big audience or small, that I would not let the results have an impact on my way of working. But it would be a bit silly for me to change my methods when I have a big success. That means my methods work well.
I fell in love with that movie [Now You See Me]. I liked the actors. I thought it was an interesting world. When they called me with the opportunity to direct the next one, the first question I needed to address was, what are we going to do to make it different? How can I add something to the franchise? If I can't add anything, then there's no reason for me to do it.
Most directors do work in pairs. There's usually some form of this, sometimes it literally comes down to you both show up in the morning and one of you is like, "I'm a little tired and overwhelmed today, so I might need you to just be a little step ahead of me and speak with more confidence because I'm not quite there." So, there's quite a bit of that in other teams.
I like filmmakers that try to touch upon the metaphysical, the things that are behind all this, that you can't actually physically interact with, but are somehow intuitively there. Maybe you can see the ashes of that fire or the echoes of something happening on a domain not-here, whether that be coincidence, whether that be familiarity with somebody who's a stranger.
I asked myself if I would kill my parents to save his life, a question I had been posing since I was fifteen. The answer always used to be yes. But in time, all those boys had faded away, and my parents were still there. I was now less and less willing to kill them for anyone; in fact, I worried for their health. In this case, however, I had to say yes. Yes, I would.
Well, what if we did this in the mind as opposed to the brain? So instead of blood vessels and dendrites, what if it was consciousness and dream production? And that would allow us to have characters that represent emotions. And that felt like, man, that's exactly what animation does best - strong, opinionated, caricatured personalities. And that just got me excited.
Everyone has an angel, a guardian who watches over us. We can't know what form they'll take. One day old man, next day little girl. But don't let appearances fool you, they can be as fierce as any dragon. Yet they are not here to fight are battles, but to whisper from a hearth. Reminding that it's us... it's everyone of us who holds the power of the worlds we create.
I hate slick and pretty things. I prefer mistakes and accidents. Which is why I like things like cuts and bruises - they're like little flowers. I've always said that if you have a name for something, like 'cut' or 'bruise,' people will automatically be disturbed by it. But when you see the same thing in nature, and you don't know what it is, it can be very beautiful.
I remember in The Conversation, they brought all these coats to me, and they said: Do you want him to look like a detective, Humphrey Bogart? Do you want him to look like a blah blah blah. I didn't know, and said the theme is 'privacy' and chose the plastic coat you could see through. So knowing the theme helps you make a decision when you're not sure which way to go.
Falling in love is when the presence of this person makes you release all kinds of substances in your brain, serotonins and endorphins. The moment you break up with that same person, you feel like a junkie who is not getting the drug anymore. Many times I've heard people say, "I'm in love with falling in love". You get all the best and all the worst in the same place.
When people talk to me about the digital divide, I think of it not so much about who has access to what technology as about who knows how to create and express themselves in the new language of the screen. If students aren't taught the language of sound and images, shouldn't they be considered as illiterate as if they left college without being able to read and write?
We have those new environments [during Kung Fu Panda 3] that give a scale to the movie, that are the spirit realm and the panda village. The spirit realm, having no gravity, having this massive space, allowed us to do huge action shots. All that we just couldn't do before. We just couldn't get the scale, we'd have to cheat them. This time we found ourselves more free.
It takes no prisoners. We had to completely change wardrobe for the girls because we had summer wardrobe set and it was so frigidly cold while we were shooting. And the bug population was through the roof, that summer. It was just silly! The fact that we even survived at all is shocking. The fact that we came out of it with a movie that I really like is awe-inspiring.
I've been making films with almost no dialogue (laughs), so sound and music become a very powerful character to tell the story. It's almost like with sound and music and images, it's your tool to tell the story, especially when I decide to structure the film in a way that usually goes against the conventions of the three-act structure which most films are made out of.
Nixon identified himself as a crisis-laden man. He'd reach levels of victory and then he'd plunge into defeat. He was vice president, then he lost to Kennedy, then he lost the California governorship. Then came a great comeback and then he blew it again - and the next comeback, after he lost the presidency. He was a man who needed the feeling of walking the precipice.
There's no solutions to prevent corruption because it's the same thing as putting soldiers in an occupation in a foreign territory - there's too much that's gonna go wrong. There's too much human behavior that's going to get in the way. So you're gonna have to start thinking about it in a different direction, and the different direction is: what is wrong with society?
We wanted to not necessarily tell the story of the video or the song, but create an ambience. And I think now, I think that's gone now. There's nothing wrong with that. But I think we were all trying to make mini feature films. I remember when we were making the Duran videos, I would crop the top and bottom of the screen with black. So that it looked more like cinema.
Clive [Oppenheimer] and I figured out that I'm the only one probably in the film industry who is clinically sane. I say that as a joke, but there's a grain of truth to it. I'm not a stupid daredevil who jumps into the crater of the volcano to get the closest close-up, I'm not one of those. And you have to be aware that you have a crew with you and you are responsible.
You also can understand how to play tennis from Serena Williams, and she is awesome. I haven't seen her Masterclass but just watching her on the court - I saw some of Wimbledon on TV and there's such an awesome force in her and focus and determination and technique, you just look at her and it's awesome. If I would like to learn tennis I would immediately turn to her.
When I did the first edit of Les plages, it was very dry and very square in a way. I was just saying the minimum. I said, Well, if this is the minimum, I don't make it. So I tried to make it more refined. I tried to find images, allegorical images, that I could use to express things that I didn't want to say or didn't want to show or I was not able to find how to show.
If I am acting out in any particular way that is harmful to myself - without a shadow of doubt, there is a feeling suppressed under wanting that second candy bar. Often, it is that little voice I haven't paid attention to. It's generally not the adult voice. If I take a moment to address that and figure out what that is, the desire for the candy bar seems to dissipate.
When you get an idea, so many things come in that one moment. You could write the sound of that idea, or the sound of the room it's in. You could write the clothes the character is wearing, what they're saying, how they move, what they look like. Instead of making up, you're actually catching an idea, for a story, characters, place, and mood - all the stuff that comes.
It's better not to know so much about what things mean or how they might be interpreted or you'll be too afraid to let things keep happening. Psychology destroys the mystery, this kind of magic quality. It can be reduced to certain neuroses or certain things, and since it is now named and defined, it's lost its mystery and the potential for a vast, infinite experience.
It's the difference between hunting a lion and hunting a deer. If someone hunts a lion, it's like: "Wow, they're brave!" But if they're hunting a deer it's like: "That poor deer!" I know that. I know that guys getting killed is horrible but people have seen it before. You've seen The Evil Dead. With girls, it's like: "I don't want to see that happening..." I know that.
I had very good LSD, but the problem was - I tried making a film, or doing some filming, when I was on LSD, and it's impossible. I couldn't focus. I tried focusing, but when I looked through the lens, I'd see all different layers of focus, and I couldn't find which was the real one behind the camera. And I just thought, this does not work, and I never tried that again.
If you think someone's trying too hard, that's the worst thing they can do. To me, it's just desperate, never funny and never witty. It's kind of really old hat because just being shocking isn't enough. It has to change how you think about something. It has to startle you. It has to make you look at something and reconsider whether you're right. That's the whole point.
The class warfare was in the script as well. It establishes what the world is like and what would happen if we really had two zones that were left and everybody had to survive using these two areas. What would our society to do with that set up? I wanted the state of world, in my mind, how it would actually realistically unfold. I drew that from what was in the script.
However, for story reasons, we needed to represent them in certain ways. One of the things that sort of blew me away that I didn't know when we started is that memories are completely susceptible to change. And this is, you know, one of the many reasons why certain people are trying to get it taken out - eyewitness testimony in court cases because it's very unreliable.
I was scared that no one would hire me. At that time, there was still a stigma attached to it. A big stigma. Actually, I think I was healthier after the operation than some people who have bypass surgery because I was completely cured. But when you mentioned "heart transplant," you got a very negative reaction. It triggered people's imaginations, and not in a good way.
The internet is watching us now. If they want to. They can see what sites you visit. In the future, television will be watching us, and customizing itself to what it knows about us. The thrilling thing is, that will make us feel we're part of the medium. The scary thing is, we'll lose our right to privacy. An ad will appear in the air around us, talking directly to us.
It is something more fleeting than what you normally see. People might somehow take it into their own dreams, into their own life, in a way. I hear it more recently; people are telling me that when they leave the theater and see one of my films, they are not alone anymore. It's probably more that kind of feeling. If I managed to do a film like that, everything is fine.
I wrote, I think, half a dozen films that were completely out of genre. Comedies, love stories, even one serious film about Vietnam, and we couldn't get backing for any of it. And we both sort of drifted from making, at that time, serious money on Last House to going through it all in the course of almost three years and only getting offers to do something scary again.
I’m frightened of eggs, worse than frightened; they revolt me. That round white thing without any holes, and when you break it, inside there’s that yellow thing, round, without any holes… Brrr! Have you ever seen anything more revolting than an egg yolk breaking and spilling its yellow liquid? Blood is jolly, red. But egg yolk is yellow, revolting. I’ve never tasted it.
I used to see a lot of cocaine. There were journalists who used cocaine and didn't write about it and I didn't write about it. I would never do drugs, so I would always get the same response from people: "Smart kid, more for me." Whether it was a joke or sincere or both, but I was just happy not to be in there partying with the band like some of these other journalists.
Love is an ugly, terrible business practiced by fools. It’ll trample your heart and leave you bleeding on the floor. And what does it really get you in the end? Nothing but a few incredible memories that you can’t ever shake. The truth is, there’s gonna be other girls out there. I mean, I hope. But I’m never gonna get another first love. That one is always gonna be her.
For me, the key image is the boat coming through the fog at the beginning. It's something I imagined and liked and I guess there are other references in other films I make - the similar type of image. But I think it's interesting, it's breaking through the mystery, or maybe it stays in the fog... we don't really know. Where is he at the beginning of the film, who is he?
My films have always had an element of immediate autobiography, in that I shoot any particular scene according to the mood I'm in that day, according to the little daily experiences I've had and am having - but I don't tell what has happened to me. I would like to do something more strictly autobiographical, but perhaps I never will, because it isn't interesting enough.
When we wrapped Resident Evil, we were a 3D movie, but it was no big deal. And then, Avatar came out and the whole of Hollywood was like, "Look at these grosses! 3D is huge. Let's all be 3D!" We just got on with doing what we were doing, which was making what we think is a really quality, kick-ass 3D movie, and we'll really be the first live-action 3D movie of the year.
It has been said that I have three heroes: Christ, Marx and Freud. This is reducing everything to formulae. In truth, my only hero is Reality. If I have chosen to be a filmmaker as well as a writer it is because, rather than expressing reality through those symbols that are words, I have preferred the cinema as a means of expression - to express reality through reality.
And as a director, you constantly try to solve problems, so you have to focus on that. You take away all the other parts. Of course, when the shot finishes, you remember that you have Robert De Niro in front of you. But when you're shooting, you just see a character in front of you, and an actor, and you try to search for very truthful moments. That's what obsesses you.
I think Jennifer Lawrence is that inside of herself. As long as I've known her she's been both 10 years old and 50 years old. And we've watched her grow up since she walked on "Silver Linings Playbook" as a 20-year-old and had not been - "Hunger Games" had not come out. And I've watched her have to take on and deal with a great deal of attention and resources and people.
One of the more problematic aspects of the current state of cinema in Japan is that the movies playing in the theaters are by and large made not by film studios but by broadcasting companies. They're either extensions of popular television dramas or adaptations of manga or anime. Younger Japanese are simply not being exposed to good films. That situation needs to change.