Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I think the biggest thing is just making sure that you do the work that you connect with, personally, and that you do work where you can really bring something to the table. It's just about being truthful to yourself.
I began filming 'God Loves Uganda' by first meeting some of the Ugandan and American missionaries who have helped create Uganda's evangelical movement. They were often large-hearted. They were passionate and committed.
All good actors are very bright. You can't be stupid and a good actor. You may be inarticulate, you may not be highly educated, but all good actors are quick-witted, some of them dazzlingly so. All you do is guide them.
Unlike a lot of British directors, I hadn't done any theater. But, I had a great mentor who said, "What you're looking for is exactly the same thing you've done in your documentaries, which is moments of emotional truth.
The issue of animal use and abuse can seem insurmountable, it is tragic and it is complex. We love our companion animals and we value wildlife but we are generally blind to the realities of what goes into the food we eat.
Just besides how smart Aaron Sorkin stuff is, really, is how visceral it is, how sensual it is. Not sexual, sensual. Always tactile. When you read his scripts, the scripts read fast and the words almost jump off the page.
Sometimes your body language is enough for an actor to know that you're not happy. And you don't really need to say it out loud if you deal with actors you know very well. And I don't think you really need to be explicit.
I have a worm's eye view and a bird's eye view simultaneously and it's immensely helpful to understand what is happening on the shop floor when you are harnessing many talents and telling an intimate story on a large scale.
The thing that fascinates me is that the way I came to film and television is extinct. Then there were gatekeepers, it was prohibitively expensive to make a film, to be a director you had to be an entrepreneur to raise money.
I didn't know the extent of American obsession with Uganda until I got there and saw it. You ride in the plane and it's filled with American missionaries. Uganda is the No. 1 destination for American missionaries in the world.
I think you have to be scared every morning that you go out to shoot, or you lose your edge. With actors, there has to be that adrenaline and you have to keep challenging yourself, and I certainly challenge myself, as a director.
Time, Kate was learning, was like a river. You might put up obstacles, even divert it briefly, but the river had a will of it's own. It wanted to flow a certain way. You had to force it to change. You had to be willing to sacrifice.
There's something about being cerebral, intellectual, and yet emotionally repressed [in being villain]. If you think someone's doing this [bad] stuff and they're in complete control, that's more scary than if they're out of control.
The desire to share is not a vague, windy sentiment, not when you see the massive rise in live concerts in response to the phenomenon of downloading music... People want to get rid of the headphones and be part of a shared experience.
We ask actors to come to work ready to open a vein, to be emotionally thin-skinned. If someone screams, 'What about my coffee?' it's not about the coffee; it's because they're working in an emotional state. It ain't easy being an actor.
I directed 24's pilot. I felt we should follow the characters around as if we were a documentary crew, using available light, hand-held cameras, split screens, sound that isn't always what it should be, to suit the reality of the premise.
With the coming of radio as a mass medium, suddenly the world changed. It became about, 'Can this leader project emotional connection through the way he speaks on the radio?' And the anxiety about whether he could do that, we've inherited.
Waiters are like actors waiting in the wings, bantering whenever we passed each other on the restaurant floor, shouting at each other backstage in the kitchen and winking and corpsing above the heads of our audience, the unsuspecting customers.
'Traveling While Black' is about empathy, what African Americans experience in traveling throughout America, and how it hasn't changed that much from the past. If it can be experienced in virtual reality, then perhaps some empathy can be gained.
I think I would say 'The King's Speech' is surprisingly funny, in fact the audiences in London, Toronto, LA, New York commented there's more laughter in this film than in most comedies, while it is also a moving tear-jerker with an uplifting ending.
I grew up in the church, and I went into the production of 'God Loves Uganda' intending to raise awareness of the abuse of religious power in Uganda, and after 30 public appearances, I have learned a lot about how people receive this sort of message.
What I learned about stammering was that, when as a young child you lose the confidence of anyone who wants to listen to you, you lose confidence in your voice and the right to speech. And a lot of the therapy was saying, 'You have a right to be heard.'
I was really young when I was working on 'Freaks and Geeks.' In a lot of ways, that was the experience that informed a lot of what I've become, and I feel like every experience I have is in some way or another an extension of something that started there.
It is our stories [classic Disney films] that make us human - so Owen [Suskind] has become an expert in what connects us and makes us human. That got to me, the power of these stories, and the lessons these tales give us to create the connection between us.
They embrace them because they represent everything that America represents: money, power, and freedom. Why else would you see an old Ugandan woman respectfully listen to a 22-year-old white girl from America telling her what she should or shouldn't believe?
I nearly died with the peritonitis, but not the heart attack. The heart attack was like bad indigestion and two weeks later I was back in shouting at people. I was shouting at people during the heart attack. I had it for three days without realising what it was.
I agree that Scott Lively is marginal, and that is exactly why evangelicals must not let him speak for them. But in Uganda, Scott Lively is allowed to address the parliament for five hours, and his hate-filled message led directly to the anti-homosexuality bill.
I love the incredible variety of demands directing makes on you, from the entrepreneur to the hustler to the deal-maker to the writer; to directing actors and the camera and working with music, sound, marketing and promotion. It uses so many sides of your brain.
When I was in high school, I felt totally alienated from the world, but I loved movies. They were my escape, but coming from a disadvantaged community, I never knew that filmmaking was an option for me. A program like School of Doc would have been a game-changer.
It's pretty easy in theatre. The comedy's either physical or verbal, and you're looking at the whole frame at once. But TV executives want close-ups. I keep telling them to look at Preston Sturges' movies. He'll do a whole scene without a cut in it, and it's a riot.
I'm a voyeur. I say that with no embarrassment. If I could have a superpower, being invisible would be it, no question. I'm fascinated by human behavior; observing people and seeing how much story gets told without a lot of dialogue, and how much our brain fills in.
After my grandfather's plane took enemy fire, he was denied permission to land at the first available airstrip. In that classic British bureaucratic way, they said he had to go back to your own airbase in the Midlands. They crashed between the coast and the airfield.
When I was filming 'Prudence' in Zimbabwe, I noticed the hold fundamentalist Christianity had on sub-Saharan Africa. So I thought I'd like to make a film about religion in Africa because the prosperity gospel is big business where people are desperate, poor, and sick.
Trans stories have now entered the mainstream in this fantastic way, but the most important thing is what follows from that is hopefully a shift in the experience of trans people - so that there's more acceptance in the culture to the issues they face and more support.
I was always obsessed with finding truly researched images to add authenticity, out of that came something totally contemporary and modern. Research is very key to my process because over and over again, reality provides more interesting images than you could have invented.
Aaron Sorkin whole thing was that he didn't want the pomposity of the presidency in the West Wing. But once we cast Martin Sheen and we realised Martin's incredible accessibility, nothing felt pompous or aloof. If the show is about all the planets, let's end it with the sun.
I think many Dutch just don't know the history of Black Pete, that he is rooted in slavery, and how he was used to dehumanize a race of people. Once they realize this, many stop using this character, but those who continue are either in denial, insensitive or actually racists.
While the documentary community is way ahead of Hollywood, it is still nowhere near where it needs to be. Filmmakers of color rarely get hired by the powerful production companies, and they are not getting supported enough by broadcasters and funders to tell their own stories.
I feel connected to the Second World War because my father lost his father in that war. So, through my dad and the effect it had on him of losing his father young, I always felt connected to the war. It goes back years, but it still feels to me as if we're completely living in it.
When I decided to make 'Blackface,' a short film about Black Pete, I had little knowledge of the giant cesspool of hate I was about to dive into. I didn't realize how popular and passionate many white Dutch are about a figure that they connect to fond memories from their childhood.
Tap dancers find it very difficult to do anything other than tap if that is all they have been trained in because, again, it's a whole different ballgame that you're constantly working on - bent legs, loose ankles - which you cannot afford to do when you're doing jumps or anything else.
We put too much on contemporary dancers. A lot of them cannot change styles; a lot of them can't do anything else other than run around the stage reaching and stretching in anguish to somebody off camera that I never understand who it is. But it's the teenage angst they have to live with.
I had horrible moment at the end of a very successful day, where I realized I just felt nothing about it and I didn't care. And I had that fear that I would, because I was successful at it, that I would be there 20, 30 years down the road, doing this job and just not caring about what I did.
If you don't know the right people or have the right connections, you may never be discovered. With 'Opening Act,' we are democratizing a notoriously impossible process, pulling back the curtains on a consistently fascinating industry, and affording aspiring artists the chance of a lifetime.
I think we all have blocks between us and the best version of ourselves, whether it's shyness, insecurity, anxiety, whether it's a physical block, and the story of a person overcoming that block to their best self. It's truly inspiring because I think all of us are engaged in that every day.
I had full access to the material, and had a great relationship with Sean Bailey, the president of Disney productions. He really guided me through the licensing process of the footage. I made presentations to the various departments at the studio, and they were moved by Owen's [Suskind] story.
I can't believe that I'm sitting in meetings with Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, and Annette Bening. I want to take on that responsibility to represent all the Rogers out there who don't have a seat at the table. People of colour were not at the table, and now I am there, I want to change things.
I grew up in Queens, and on Sunday evenings, my parents would drive my brother and me past the factory. We could smell the week's supply of bread baking. I always connected the 59th Street Bridge with that scent. Who woulda thunk, years later, I'd be there, directing and producing a hit TV show?
I believe there is a relationship between having an interest in the arts and the behaviour of society as a whole. Some politicians find it difficult that the arts is a weapon of happiness... Politics is often about deprivation rather than the opening up of ideas and nourishing creative endeavour.
I'm inclined to think that, because it's such an awful life, that politicians do go into it for the best reasons. I mean, some may love the sound of their own voice. But it's such a wearying life, you've got to be impelled by some desire to leave the world a better place than when you came into it.