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My dad has a great expression. He always says, 'Tell me a fact and I'll learn, tell me the truth and I believe, but tell me a story, and it will live in my heart forever.' Interestingly enough now, my dad's story is going to be in Canton and hopefully that will live forever, too.
I have loved football as an almost mythic game since I was in the fourth grade. To me, the game wasn't even grounded in reality. The uniform turned you into a warrior. Being on a team, the mythology of physical combat, the struggle against the elements, the narrative of the game.
I never thought in terms of a "breakthrough" film. I wasn't looking for fame or a career path into Hollywood. I was doing it for myself. I just wanted to make a film that I really loved. If other people liked it, great. But you can never guess what other people are going to like.
In Mexico, when we want to speak deep secrets, we drink pulgue together. It is a drink made from the cactus plant, and when you take the bottle from your mouth, it leaves a string behind, between the mouth and the bottle, like a spider's web. It shows that the truth sticks inside.
Usually, YouTube channels are named after the person that you see on camera... or in the case of ours, it could have been the show, but we didn't even name the company 'Red vs. Blue.' We named it something else to give people the idea that we were going to be doing more than that.
Sometimes when an actor and director work together for the first time, it's not as if there's a suspicion, but there is tentativeness, a certain amount of a right of passage you have to go through in order to get there. When it's already there from the beginning, it's such a plus.
If the Russian government continues to pump money into it and makes their national teams train in Sochi and just sort of prop it up as a point of pride, then perhaps. But I don't think anybody living there was begging for multiple 40,000-seat venues to be plopped down in the city.
Most young people make films to be accepted, to be discovered, when in fact that was the last idea with the group I went to film school with. To be discovered was not our intention. Our intention was to tell our story our way, and make our own mistakes and learn from film to film.
I'm really lucky because my sister is a real activist soul and also hyper-intellectualized in this way that's really allowed me to wrap my mind around some of the bigger intellectual concepts and really understand the language around identity in the gender nonconforming community.
If a Danish politician would go up and say he believes in God, people would be a little bit taken aback by that because it's slightly different there than in the U.S. Most of Europe is not that faith based, especially in terms of the politics, and politicians don't use that there.
Sometimes I go to the cinema and I see a movie where the directors or the filmmakers are telling me what to think, what to feel. They are giving me all the answers, and I'm like, "What am I doing here?" I try to have an active audience that are thinking and feeling for themselves.
I think that James Baldwin is, for sure, one of the most important American writer/thinkers of his time... not just African-American. He singled-handily revolutionized the political, artistic and historical discourses about America. He created his particular and original language.
Everyone knows drones are being deployed outside the US for assassinations. Let's say you even believe in drones. Shouldn't we have a system that would "justify" their use? i.e. we did this attack, because these bad guys were there, and here's what we did. We don't even have that.
I've been making movies for a long time. The Japanese way of making movies has become second nature to me. To get away from that, I really try to surround myself with younger staff and approach making movies not like a veteran of the industry but always as a beginner and a rookie.
the things that people are typically afraid of are what I find most exciting and unpredictable, and I guess that's part of the problem is people don't want something unpredictable wasting their time while the cameras are rolling, where to me that's by far the most interesting part.
If I really feel that I want to shoot live people and live backgrounds, then that movie will become live-action. If I don't have any particular actors I want to use, I'd probably consider animation for that project. Which medium I use doesn't really make that much difference to me.
What makes international cinema so interesting is that each territory has its own sensibility. When you look at an Indian or French film, there's a certain flavor. And even though the language is different, if the film is successful, it has something very common and understandable.
There is something about being a director where, for me personally, I get to . . . it's the closest I'll ever come to being able to be a stand up. And to use my particular sense of humor, and hear people laughing, without me having to stand up in front of an audience and tell jokes.
We recognize that the whole world is kind of moving in this direction to digital distribution, but at the same time, there are still people who only watch movies in a movie theater, and there are some people who only watch certain programs on television or certain things on Netflix.
If you're filming somebody doing something they really want to do, you're probably not very high on their list of problems to deal with. You see James Carville on the phone - he's like that whether you have a camera or not. He isn't doing it just for you, and that's hard to explain.
When I was trying to create this so-called Lav Diaz verité, it just happened. At some point, I became very comfortable with the one frame, with the single take. It just happened. I didn't plan it. I was looking for my own aesthetic, my own perspective, my own voice, and it happened.
I didn't drink in the essence of the classroom. I didn't take legible notes or dance all night. I thought I would marry my boyfriend and grow old and sick of him. I thought I would keep my friends, and we'd make different, new memories. None of that happened. Better things happened.
The health insurance industry does not like to pay out claims, because they don't make money. The only way they can make a profit is if they don't pay for your operation. If they pay for your operation and your doctor's appointment and your pharmaceuticals, they don't make any money.
If the guy out in the woods with the Michigan Militia is a real estate negotiator, instead of some crackpot, and has a normal life, that's unnerving. You don't want to think it's as normal as the guy next door, hedging his lawn. It's easier to demonize or separate them off from 'us.'
For my very first movie, 'Roger and Me,' I made it as part of my deal with Warner Brothers that the four people that were evicted in that film, that Warner Brothers would house - would pay their mortgage or their rent for the next two years to give them a chance to get on their feet.
Giving people what they want reduces us to consumers instead of treating us like citizens, consumers who are on the prowl for the predictable and comfortable. What we want winds up being suspiciously like what we've already got, more of the same-the cultural equivalent of a warm bath.
It's not just that we all as individuals should reevaluate our relationship with our devices - maybe you should, on a personal level - but in terms of balancing the micro and the macro and the personal and the structural, it's actually a bigger issue than you and your phone addiction.
I am honored to be one of this year's Urbanworld ambassadors for the festival's 20th anniversary, joining my friend David Oyelowo. I have always had a special relationship with Urbanworld, back to my days as a festival publicist to previewing my earlier films and now as an ambassador.
Art forms of the past were really considered elitist. Bach did not compose for the masses, neither did Beethoven. It was always for patrons, aristocrats, and royalty. Now we have a sort of democratic version of that, which is to say that the audience is so splintered in its interests.
The filmmakers are very much in their own kind of bubble. It was kind of a revelation to me and I realized why so many of the great filmmakers are one of a kind people. You know, they have a vision. They may be influenced by other filmmakers, but they don't work with them on anything.
Hollywood industry people are very spoiled. I don't think they can adjust to the insane, no-money, super-hard working tradition of Japanese filmmaking. I don't think any American can go through that. They don't want to work more than twelve hours and they want Saturday and Sunday off.
I'm always interested in the ways in which a character can inhabit either a theme or a premise personally, so that those scenes that are about his character or his relationship with other characters feel in context and don't seem to be apart from or oddly vestigial to the actual drama.
Athol Fugard became famous as a playwright, so although 'Tsotsi' the book was written in the '60s, it was only published in the '80s. It was then optioned pretty much every year by producers. I think the problem was that holding onto its period setting made it very hard to get finance.
I'm working in a form of cinema that can be described, and has been described, as a diaristic form of cinema. In other words, with material from my own life. I walk through life with my camera, and occasionally I film. I never think about scripts, never think about films, making films.
On one level, nothing's really changed in my life. I still drive my daughter in the car pool on Monday. But it's impossible not to be aware of this rush of attention; it's impossible not to be seduced by it once you've entered into it, seduced by being unhappy when the attention wanes.
To put it simply, as a black man, I started watching films at the age of six, and I've since seen the bad guys changing race - between the African savages, to the Native Americans, and then the blacks and the Arabs and the Chinese and the Vietnamese. Look at 'Rambo': it's exactly that.
When my father bid $5,000 for the 1962 Championship Game, that was a huge amount. It was double the bid the year before. Pete Rozelle was flabbergasted. Who was this guy who was willing to spend so much money on what seemed like relatively worthless rights to the NFL Championship Game?
I think I have pretty good taste in the projects I choose to take on. It's a blessing and a curse - I certainly could have worked a lot more if I wasn't as selective, but I just can't bring myself to spend two years of my life slaving away on some project I'm not really enthused about.
It's always the balance between the individual's subjective experience and the social structural condition. As individuals we have access to more than we've ever had before. Giving up our data seems a small price to pay, especially if, as you say, we don't feel we have anything to hide.
Just because a movie is satisfactory means that the person who makes it is satisfactory. One can make a wonderful movie but still not be a wonderful person. In terms of interviews, it's probably not a good idea, because moviemakers tend not to tell the truth, even when asked a question.
One sad consequence of this is that people don't feel permitted to try understand Internet infrastructure, so I'm really grateful to groups like Free Press and other nonprofits who are trying to make the issue urgent and comprehensible. And Andre Blum's book Tubes is great on this topic.
Coral reefs are the backbone for the entire ocean. They are the nursery for the ocean. About a quarter of all marine life in the ocean spends part of its lifecycle on a coral reef. And there are about a billion or so people that depend on coral reefs for fish for their food, for protein.
Human beings are really attuned to their senses. When you work in film, you are working with the visual and audio senses. An understanding of tactile and other components that go into the creation of those objects are important to making them look real on screen, like a plasma of energy.
Women saying "I'm not a feminist" is my greatest pet peeve. Do you believe that women should be paid the same for doing the same jobs? Do you believe that women should be allowed to leave the house? Do you think that women and men both deserve equal rights? Great, then you're a feminist.
I try to make a film that's very entertaining, very funny, but also gives you something to think about. And the strongest thing I have to offer is my point of view, to get across how I see the world in hopes that it can change the way other people see the world, hopefully for the better.
For many years, I did pantomime with Marcel Marceau. I was a writer for him and got to know very well how to use the body for illustration. I wanted to do a mother without arms, but using the arms of her son in Santa Sangre. The tragedy should always have something funny. Something weird.
My point, though, is that if lines have indeed shifted, it's not so much that the younger generation just doesn't care, it's that we have ceded more and more of our public life over to the private sector. If you grow up with advertising at school, you have come of age in a sold-out world.
Any film that you see that has any progressive spirits that is made by any people of color or a woman is a triumph in and of itself. Whether you agree with it or not. Something that comes with some point of view and some personal perspective from a woman or a person of color is a unicorn.
It is important to know that what I do is not artistic. I am just a film-maker. I live how I live and I do what I do, which is recording moments of my life as I move ahead. And I do it because I am compelled to. Necessity, not artistry, is the true line you can follow in my life and work.
One of my favorite facts about Jason [Benjamin] is that he collects shirts from tattoo parlors. He has a bunch of tattoo parlor T-shirts, but no tattoos. And then he wears, like, vans and jeans. My boyfriend said he looks like a modern Bruce Springsteen, which is a pretty high compliment.