Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Aren't most of us dealing with the fact that we have moms who either weren't ready to be moms or had some level of resentment about it? Everybody is dealing with the different iteration of pain their mom has handed them.
I feel like every time I take on a movie, it's important that the possibility of failure exists, and of the unknown, because it's a challenge to do something I haven't done before and something I have to try to work out.
Nobody has been arrested on Wall Street for the crash of 2008. They're not paying their fair share of the taxes. And now with the Citizens United case of the Supreme Court, they get to buy politicians up out in the open.
I'm not a pundit. I'm not an analyst. I don't want to participate in the existing debate that's going on about whether or not you should be able to have as many guns as you want to have or that guns are even the problem.
I don't slot actors into the image of a character that's already built. I build characters by listening to the voice and the story inside the heart of each actor. Art and life are linked, and expressed through my actors.
I don't like most Christmas movies. They're pretty bad, though they seem to make tons of money anyway. Like this movie 'Elf,' I got the script for that, and I turned it down right away. Against my wife's better judgment.
We are proud to be the No. 1 most funded film on Indiegogo... and with a totally new property. In a world filled with sequels and reboots, Lazer Team is a brand-new IP being made possible by the people who want to see it.
In the case of all the carmakers, there's a certain amount of greenwash. Take Toyota: They were pushing the Prius while they were meanwhile marketing the hell out of the Sequoia and other models with terrible gas mileage.
When the fearsome foursome of rock music, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Little Richard, and Jerry Lee Lewis, decided to show up in Toronto for a rock and roll festival, I knew we had to go there to try to get them all on film.
Occupy has to continue as a bold, in-your-face movement - occupying banks, corporate headquarters, board meetings, campuses and Wall Street itself. We need weekly - if not daily - nonviolent assaults right on Wall Street.
I'm from the point of view there's something important to deliver to the world. You can be an entertainer; I suppose I shouldn't be down on the idea of going to see a film for the hell of it, but there's too much of that.
There's no choice left in America anymore. Anything that's authentic and genuine, anything that grew out of any sense of tradition, is wiped out. We're left with this bland monoculture that's swept over the whole country.
I think my dad would make an incredible president, and it would be great if he'd run again. But personally, for our family, part of me is glad that he didn't. We lost our mother recently, and we need to focus on ourselves.
All this stuff - about the materiality of the network, what it's made of, and how it works - should be part of a basic media literacy, because we depend on this technology for more and more aspects of our day-to-day lives.
One of the first cassette tapes I ever purchased was the 'Rambo III' score. I was not allowed to see 'Rambo,' but my mom would allow me to buy the music, so I would listen to that score over and over and imagine the movie.
No aquarium, no tank in a marine land, however spacious it may be, can begin to duplicate the conditions of the sea. And no dolphin who inhabits one of those aquariums or one of those marine lands can be considered normal.
As far as the balance between being a journalist, being an artist, being a storyteller - documentary filmmakers are all three of those things. The balance between them is affected by the film itself, the topic of the film.
Working on a set and working with actors, that's all the same. The moment you're doing it and you're in the moment, you don't have time to think about it. You just have to make it as good as you possibly can on the moment.
I have this theory that if you do a film, those who have not fallen asleep or left the cinema, they will live with the film much longer, and it will really enter their imagination and the subconscious much more profoundly.
From film to film, even documentaries, I was learning the medium and learning how to bring form into some kind of relationship with the content, how to work it, and above all, how to create some kind of order out of chaos.
'The Restraint of Beasts' is a painful subject. We'd shot 60% of the film when I had to stop. The material looks great, like nothing I've ever done or even seen before. It could have been really great, definitely original.
I could never work in that kind of commercial environment where the stars have a lot to say, where the producers kind of push you around and tell you who to cast and who not to cast. I'm just not interested in that at all.
I feel the art world in New York has a stronger following than Britain. If you go to a New York art district on a Saturday morning, it will be so busy with families and openings - art is much more ingrained in the culture.
All this technology has not changed the way NFL Films does business and our process. Yes, with one touch of a button now you reach millions of people but it is still the same approach that my father and I started out with.
We didn't join YouTube until late 2008 because when we first looked at it, honestly, I viewed them as a competitor. But then it grew to the point where if you wanted to be part of the conversation, you had to be on YouTube.
When you're in the muck you can only see muck. If you somehow manage to float above it, you still see the muck but you see it from a different perspective. And you see other things too. That's the consolation of philosophy.
I watched aspirationally. I looked at movies that maybe I didn't entirely understand but which developed in me some thirst for their subjects or for their context, and that became part of how I came to understand the world.
To restate an old law - when a man bites a fish, that's good, but when a fish bites a man, that's bad. This is one way of saying it's all right if man kills an animal, but if an animal attacks man, the act is reprehensible.
Of course you don't want anybody to feel shame for their sexuality. But you also want to make it clear that a loud, a loud and proud approach to your sexuality at a young age isn't necessary to be a fully integrated person.
I quit my job. I bought myself a real cheap, like, around-the-world flight ticket, and I went to 16 countries for six months just backpacking, living in cheap hostels, looking for stories with a camera and my ex-girlfriend.
I don't 'support the troops' or any of those other hollow and hypocritical platitudes uttered by Republicans and frightened Democrats. Here's what I do support: I support them coming home. I support them being treated well.
There's nothing inherently or patently wrong with anybody who does well, works hard, earns a living, betters themselves. I'm not against any of these things. It's about how you make that money, and then what you do with it.
Those are just some of the people whom we interviewed in the documentary, but that should provide you with a good sense of the credibility of the individuals who bolster the case that this administration lied us into a war.
If people take the film and screen it whenever possible for their social and professional networks, we can continue to make a difference. It is one more element we have to use in the ongoing effort to take back our country.
I believe that when people try to live their life at the fullest, there's a certain laughter that comes out of it. The more they try to live their life seriously, the funnier it is. It happens all the time in our real life.
If I see my films described as 'quirky' or, even worse, 'snarky' one more time, I'm going to probably seriously consider an early retirement. All these years, I've labored under the conceit that they were "darkly humorous.'
The more you know the better it gets. The more politics there is, the more you understand. Sometimes the races are terribly boring but what's going on off the track is great. And then it makes the race much more interesting.
My family didn't film anything. But then you look deeper and realize, maybe there are photographs, there are things. It's also context: You give something a context, and suddenly it becomes really deep or meaningful footage.
We're actually thinking about distributing 'Moon Over Broadway' on-line. It's tempting, because when you go to a major studio, it's sort of like a farm, you know? They make all the money, since it's kind of a buyer's market.
It's hard not to want to become Ken Burns at times. I'm interested in being a Ken Burns who reaches that 17-year-old who goes to the multiplex just to see a good story well-told. And if there's history in it, all the better.
This whole business of documentary being a second-class citizen is bullshit. A documentary can be as interesting, as dramatic, as sad, as funny, blah, blah, blah, as a fiction movie. Or it can be as awful as a fiction movie!
A specter is haunting the cinema: the specter of narrative. If that apparition is an Angel, we must embrace it; and if it is a Devil, then we must cast it out. But we cannot know what it is until we have met it face to face.
As with sound, images are subjective. You and I may not see the same color red as red, but we will probably agree that the image on the screen is a digital image or film image, based on contrast, bit depth, and refresh rate.
Things that feel super personal actually feel really universal. It's sort of the more you really identify something specific within yourself, the more people connect to it because ultimately we are all connected in some way.
To me, the best projects are the ones where you have a pretty good idea of what the spine of it's gonna be, but then all sorts of things happen that you could've never predicted, and those are the magic moments of the films.
I am not greedy. I do not seek to possess the major portion of your days. I am content if, on those rare occasions whose truth can be stated only by poetry, you will, perhaps, recall an image, even only the aura of my films.
People of my age who went to college, go into college, you know what it cost back then? Nothing or next to nothing. At the most, you had to work at Dairy Queen during the summer and that would pay for your college education.
I do not proactively approach Hollywood, but also I do not always turn down offers. But since I'm living as a movie director, I have a desire to shoot something like 'This is a Hollywood movie!' at least once in my lifetime.
On the contrary a film can promote the idea of change without any political message whatsoever but in its form and language can tell people that they can change their lives and contribute to progressive changes in the world.
My mother has a very big family in Shanghai, so I have, like, almost 40 cousins, so we stayed together all the time. So by the time I get to Hong Kong, I become the only child and the only one surrounded by adults, you know.