Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
When you get that opportunity to be honest and open with somebody, for the first time, and share things about yourself that you haven't been able to share before, that you might be scared of or ashamed about, that's really exhilarating, and I think that's something that people will really identify with.
For me, there were a few things in the Spider-Man comics that I thought were really interesting. There's this story about Peter's parents and where he came from, and I thought that it was really interesting to explore the emotional consequence of someone whose parents had left them, at a very young age.
Many things have changed in our culture here in England as a direct result of the Pistols: the whole street-fashion thing in London, for example, or the coverage of popular culture in the national press, or the fact that the film industry is now about young people making films about young British issues.
I've played in bands myself, and sat on the floor photographing some of the greatest bands in the world while they rehearse. What's always struck me is how different the sensory, especially auditory, experience is when you're in the middle of the music with the musicians playing off each other around you.
I have been lucky in my life to have met people that are special, so extraordinary talented that they somehow are on a different plane. Sometimes these amazingly talented people find a way to keep reinventing themselves to stay relevant and alive. Some fall under the crushing vibrancy of their own intensity.
I remember where I was when I first heard 'Boyz N The Hood' - 126th Street and Normandy, South Central, Los Angeles. I remember that I was on my porch. What they described in that song was so vivid and so clear to me because it was the kind of life I was used to witnessing and partly experiencing in my neighborhood.
I wanted to make a film that wasn't just a biography. When you watched it, you actually felt that you watched a movie, that you had an emotional reaction. In order to do that, I felt that I had to really keep myself emotionally raw while working on the film. I had to feel myself crying, so the audience could be moved, too.
Why did I want to become a director? I just had an early interest. My uncle was an actor in a local community theatre, and he ultimately persuaded me and a buddy of mine to come to that theatre, and we went to meet girls, and that turned into interested in kind of behind-the-scenes things, and from that point on, I was focused.
I was a little hesitant at first because there's so many ways you can get 'Straight Outta Compton' wrong. You know, it's such a great story; it's such a classic tale. I was a little nervous 'cause it's like a very narrow road to success with that type of story - you got to get it right - but when I read it, I was pleasantly surprised.
I've tried to stay true, in my own fashion, to the ideas of The Sex Pistols, even while I was working with bands like Duran Duran or the Stones, whoever it might be. The thing that was attractive to me personally about videos in the beginning was that it was uncharted territory, and in a sense the record companies didn't know what they were doing.
I think that if you make something that's relatable then people will attach themselves to it. You can express it in a lot of different ways but I feel like as long as you are consistent and fair with the audience they'll engage irrespective of how they self-identify. I think it just gets too complicated to track all those differences between demographics.
What's always struck me is how different the sensory, especially auditory, experience is when you're in the middle of the music with the musicians playing off each other around you. I wanted to find a way to unlock the intensity of that, to recreate that unique perspective, first for the hundreds of people who attended the concert, and eventually for a much larger online audience.
I love making films, and as long as I love the subject, I just have a crazy amount of passion and energy for the project. The project that influenced me the most is this cooking show I do online. I film it all myself, and I think making so many of those gave me the confidence that all I need is a camera, and I could go and do an interview. The freedom to be a filmmaker - you just need a camera.
Nerds are running the world. Andrew Garfield made a movie [called “The Social Network”] about it. Nerds are no longer pariahs and knowing how to write computer code is longer a [mocked] quality. What was important in those early comics was this notion that Peter Parker is an outsider and how we define that in a contemporary context. That, I think, was one of the challenges for us — getting Peter Parker’s outsider status to be current.
I think it's really important, when you're redefining a character [ Spider-Man], for the audience to experience things that they haven't experienced, from the ground up. I wanted to build a character. I feel like point of view is a really crucial thing in the story, and that you need to build up the emotional building blocks, so that you can experience all the other emotions in a very specific way, rather than just experiencing it in an intellectual way.
I think in that context, when a generation of kids is that ignorant of their recent history, it does a good job of showing what the Pistols were standing for. It's current and it's in the air, partly because I think nothing contemporary is as extreme or as strongly stated as what The Sex Pistols were able to do in their time, in the '70s. I think the reason to [make the film] is that their ideas are still alive: the defense of the right to be an individual, and questioning everything you read, and questioning all the information that's bombarded increasingly at you.