Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I think there's something strange about writing a script I've written many, many scripts - dozens and dozens of scripts - and every time I start one, I think to myself: 'why in the world do I think I know how to do this?'
I think the progressive audience that loves Star Trek will be happy that we're continuing that tradition being progressive and all-inclusive. Star Trek's not necessarily a universe where I want to hear a lot of profanity.
I wanted Season 2 of Luke Cage to be Ice Cube's 'Death Certificate,' or Fugees' 'The Score,' or Public Enemy's 'It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back,' or my favorite, 'The Low End Theory' by A Tribe Called Quest.
Hard work. Well, that=s all right for people who don=t know how to do anything else. It=s all right for people who aren=t lucky. But once you==re lucky, you don=t have to work for other people. You make them work for you.
Reviewers are certainly entitled to their own opinions. I've become buddies with enough writers and directors, and to be perfectly honest, the ones that have lasted a long time don't pay a lot of attention to the reviews.
I am no longer haunted by my dead father. I am no longer haunted by childhood home. There's so many things I've cured myself of without realising and now when I'm embark on a project I know I'm going to cure myself of it.
Use people whom you're excited by and who share your excitement... The ideal collaboration is one in which the actor and director are saying to each other, 'I can't believe how lucky we are to be making a movie together.'
In my mind, if you went back to the Middle Ages, in Italy they'd be speaking Middle Age Italian. And at that point, it would obviously be indecipherable for us, but for the people of that time, it was just normal talking.
When I was doing research on the M.C.s and spending time with these cats, one of the things that struck me and made me realize that I could deliver this world to an audience was their really dark and acute sense of humor.
I began to pick apart our knowledge of Frankenstein and discovered that the public's idea of this myth comes from a million different places... I became committed to recontextualizing it all so it all worked in one story.
I like taking genres and subverting them. I did that with In the Valley of Elah. I said, "Okay, this is just a murder mystery. Relax." And then, two thirds of the way through, I broke every convention of a murder mystery.
When I came to England I was quite surprised to see that you people have it too. But why people are so interested in other people's private lives is beyond me. It's like group hypnosis, or something - a giant distraction.
I would guess that Ray Bradbury would be equally resentful of what they did with Illustrated Man, which, you know, took a central idea thesis of his and pissed all over it - made it into one of the worst movies ever made.
I do say all I've ever written about is being alone. And most people take that as, 'Oh, that's so sad.' And I always say, 'No. No, all I ever write about is being alone, and sometimes that's a beautiful, beautiful thing.'
I love audiences, but they're not there to drive the bus. Whenever you ask opinions or anticipate opinions you can get pretty terrible art, or non-art. You need a single guiding intelligence, even in a collaborative form.
So we came to the Ritz hotel and the Ritz Hotel was divine. Because when a girl can sit in a delightful bar and have delicious champagne cocktails and look at all the important French people in Paris, I think it is divine.
It's finding those nonsensical pieces of conversation that we all do all the time. We do all the time. When we're talking on the telephone, there are arguments with people who agree when they both think that they disagree.
The public doesn't know what to believe anymore. We don't know what stories are supposedly true, this idea of 'fake news.' We watch it on what I guess you would call a split-focus. It's half entertainment and half mystery.
A wise man will always allow a fool to rob him of ideas without yelling “Thief.” If he is wise he has not been impoverished. Nor has the fool been enriched. The thief flatters us by stealing. We flatter him by complaining.
And also the idea of not making it apparent that it's different from the rest of the film, even though there are visual differences, the audience is supposed to think that they are with him when he wakes up in the morning.
There are too many ideas and things and people. Too many directions to go. I was starting to believe the reason it matters to care passionately about something, is that it whittles the world down to a more manageable size.
I think it's time to explore our relationship to the hereafter and the now and determine whether or not there is a part mankind can play at this time to forestall the nuclear bubble breaking and the world coming to an end.
In America it's all, 'I'm gonna make something of myself, leave my tiny town and go to L.A!' Canadians are like, 'I'm gonna make something of myself, go to L.A., and then come right back again to hang out with my buddies!'
'Precious' is strangely uplifting. It goes down into the valley but it also goes to the mountain tops. A lot of difficult realities are explored in 'Precious,' but the peaks make the valleys and the valleys make the peaks.
The great thing about horror films is that they work on a low budget. The genre is the star. You don't need big movie stars, and I actually think a lot of times that the best horror films are the low budget contained ones.
I mean I met James Wan at film school. That's where we met. I didn't go to film school to find someone else to work with. I was thinking I would go and learn to direct and go and be a director like everyone else at school.
For the blockbusters, people were always telling me that if you write female protagonists, the boys won't go, so you have to put the boys' stuff in it to get everybody. I write for people from 8 to 80, and that's not easy.
When we are in pre-production, this is the best job in the world. Working 10 to 7, sitting around and brainstorming with the other writers, making things funnier and writing and rewriting scenes - that's as fun as it gets.
With bad sci-fi - sci-fi that I don't really like - you watch it and get the impression that you're just seeing exactly what they created because they needed it in the movie. You feel like there's nothing more beyond that.
I just have this feeling if I take pi, well past all this static, take pi to 10 million, 20 million digits, that I'll find something really incredible. Not just a pattern, not just an order, but a sign. A mathematical sign.
I was born in the theatre. My father was a small time impresario on the West Coast and I was acting from the age of 7, but I started to write when I was 12 and by the time I was 14 I was making more money than I was acting.
If you write an original, its like you went in and dug a well, and you hit oil. But an adaptation, its like the oil wells on fire, and they bring you in to put the fire out and get it working again - or something like that.
When I was writing 'Withnail,' I was so busted flat that I had one lightbulb that I would carry around the house with me. I mean, really. No furniture, no money, and I was hoping to be an actor, but I could never get a job.
When you sit and watch the film with an audience, the focus groups and the cards and all of that is the less what you're worrying about. When you watch a film with an audience you see what is working and what's not working.
I moved to L.A. and watched a lot of local television news, and I started to see the burn logos up on the upper right hand corner - On-Scene Video, RMG Media Group, and all these other ones. I just became intrigued with it.
'The Next Generation' was a lot of fun for a while, and then it wasn't a lot of fun. The reason it wasn't a lot of fun was that this one was going to be a guaranteed hit. The original 'Star Trek' was never a guaranteed hit.
Little kids learn to walk by falling. They fall forward and eventually they start catching themselves. All walking is controlled falling. It’s the same with success. You learn by failing. Success is just controlled failing.
Have I always agreed with my Southern, military, Mormon family? Absolutely not. Have we always figured out how to get along? Yes! At the point at which politics supersedes the family and community, we've got a real problem.
It's so fun because Jason [Mantzoukas]'s one of the smartest people I've met in comedy. So unbelievably fast comedically - so he's quick with whatever, but it's fun to watch someone be so quick and so stupid simultaneously.
The good thing about the studio is that, when the movie comes out, they will put their marketing and their money behind it, which isn't necessarily true with indie movies, just by the nature of it being an independent film.
I like animals. I like people who like animals. I hate people who love animals to the point they lose their sense of reason. I'm talking the 'my computer wallpaper is my dog,' 'I hang a Christmas stocking for my cat' crowd.
I try to take B genre movies and treat them as if they're A dramas. Get the cinematographers, get the actors to do an A drama, but it just happens to be about aliens or ghosts or crazy people, or killers, or whatever it is.
I like taking genres and subverting them. I did that with 'In the Valley of Elah.' I said, 'Okay, this is just a murder mystery. Relax.' And then, two thirds of the way through, I broke every convention of a murder mystery.
It's really tough for the small farmer to have a successful business. That is the big challenge - all the laws are designed for larger corporations. And that's going to be the challenge in this country; it goes beyond food.
I wanted to do London Boulevard because I saw the potential of a story about two people who need each other desperately, who love at first sight, as one does, and above all a story in which no one is what they appear to be.
The interesting thing about movies, it's not always - y'know, you have to have structure etc and all those things, but an audience responds, in many ways, we walk away and certain things stay in our heads that are memorable.
Some stories seem to lend themselves to telling right away. 'All The President's Men' was done, what, four or five years after the event? It certainly seemed to work there, as opposed to something that happened 40 years ago.
There is always a hesitancy with actors, and inhibitions can get into the work, so you have to figure out how to make it feel so loose that you can do anything, and if it is not right, that is okay because we'll do it again.
I only eat meat if I go to a nice restaurant and there is an exceptional dish, or if I'm at somebody's home for a dinner, I'll eat whatever is in front of me. Otherwise, I don't eat anything that walks around and has a face.
You've gotta understand: in July of '44, the Allies were still contained on the peninsula in western France and the destruction of Europe had not really begun. War had not really touched the European continent at that point.