I don't want to produce a work of art that the public can sit and suck aesthetically ... I want to give them a blow in the small of the back, to scorch their indifference, to startle them out of their complacency.
It's what I've chosen to do ... I like to see people jump out of their seats. In that sense, I'm as much of a whore as the vaudevillians were, and proud of it.
Learning to make films is very easy. Learning what to make films about is very hard. What you've really got to do is focus on learning as much about life, and about various aspects of it first. Then learn just the techniques of making a movie because that stuff you can pick up pretty quickly. But having a really good understanding of history, literature, psychology, sciences -- are very, very important to actually being able to make movies.
Zero sum game implies winners and losers. If somebody wins, somebody gotta lose ... I don’t agree with that. Because all boats can rise on a rising sea. Good films help other good films. Different psychology. If you’re overly competitive, you say it is exclusionary, a zero sum game: I must win so he must lose. That’s not true. We can all win without forcing the other guy to lose.
Since actors need to get training someplace, in New York they tend to get it in the theater. In L.A., the only place they can get it is in TV. And the series are—as valuable as they are for sheer experience—deadening emotionally. Especially if you’re in a hit. After a year in a role, you’re not really discovering anything new.
We in Hollywood say that the script is a blueprint. I think a script is more. I think the director, the actor, the cameraman, have to be servants on the script. I hate to change anything in the script on the stage. I prepare my directions on the desk. Sometimes naturally to change something in the studio, but generally I'm not changing anything.
Because of the movies I make, they get nervous, because they think of me as difficult and angry. I AM difficult and angry [laughs], but they don't expect a sense of humor. And the only thing that gets me through is a sense of humor.
I think that the tendency for most people is to fall back on a comic interpretation of things -- because things are so sad, so terrible. If you didn't laugh you'd kill yourself. But the truth of the matter is that existence in general is very very tragic, very very sad, very brutal and very unhappy.
Pure cinema is complementary pieces of film put together, like notes of music make a melody. There are two primary uses of cutting or montage in film: montage to create ideas--and montage to create violence and emotions.
It [the movie art form] combines so many other art forms, as do theater and opera, but the essence of cinema is editing. It's the combination of what can be extraordinary images, images of people during emotional moments, or just images in a general sense, but put together in a kind of alchemy. A number of images put together a certain way become something quite above and beyond what any of them are individually.
It seems to me that the great gift of the film form, to the director, is that we are not forced to think of the audience. In fact, it is impossible to think of our audience. If I write a play, I must inevitably be thinking in terms of Broadway or the West End. In other words, I must visualize the audience that will come in; its social class, its prejudices and so on. But with a film, we never think of the public at all, we simply make the film the same way you sit down and write a book, and hope that they will like it.
The author's most important answer is the work itself, and in my work people have found the few things I tried to say. Despite that, the author generally is the least suited to talk about his work.
Whereas money is a means to an end for a filmmaker, to the corporate mind money is the start. Right now, I think independent film is very confused, because there's excess pressure in the marketplace for entertainment to pay off. Entertainment has pervaded every system of information in our culture, and along with it comes the promise of money. So it's hard for artists not to keep half an eye on what works commercially as they go about realizing their visions. As a young filmmaker, you've got to deliver, and you've got to deliver fast these days; that wasn't the case twenty years ago.
I have always enjoyed dealing with a slightly surrealistic situation and presenting it in a realistic manner. I've always liked fairy tales and myths, magical stories. I think they are somehow closer to the sense of reality one feels today than the equally stylized "realistic" story in which a great deal of selectivity and omission has to occur in order to preserve its "realist" style.
The only reason I'm here is that I don't yet have the moral courage to turn down the money. [...] Still, movies do have the greatest potential. You can say important things to a lot of people.
There’s so many things that go into making a film. The director, the actors that you're working with, the time that you have to rehearse, whether you catch up with a character in time. It’s pretty hard to tell which performer performed the best. Somebody may have started out with a piece of junk and brought it up past mediocrity until it was pretty damn good, and another guy starts off with a beautiful script and deliciously defined character and marvelous director, comfortable schedule and he’s got everything going for him. I would give the credit to the guy in front of him.
I like to hire actors who have ideas, and I give them room to breathe. ... You can over-direct actors if you're not careful. So I tend to leave them alone, unless I sense they're having a problem; then I'll go over and talk to them.
I think now films are reflecting the exact same thing that goes on in society today which is for the first time since then people are sitting at restaurants and having conversations about their concerns or their beliefs in the political system and I think that films reflect that. We're not good first responder films. We have to write a script after things happen. We have to direct it. We have to shoot it. We have to edit it and release it. So, in general we tend to be, you know, is there a liberal bend, sure. I don't make any apologies about that. I'm a liberal, you know. I believe in it.
..I never write a play with an eye to film. And I don't like losing the words, as you have to, when I'm asked to turn a play into a movie. It's not a matter of ego . . . I'm just better able to create the character for an audience through words rather than through actions. I much prefer writing an original movie with the screen in mind to transferring a play to the screen.
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