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All Quotes by author - Kevin Macdonald
" Although 'The Anderson Platoon' was what we would now call an 'embedded film' - with all the ambiguities that term implies - somehow Schoendoerffer got away with showing things as they really were from a grunt's perspective. "
Call
Film
Got
" A publisher friend of mine suggested that I write a book about my grandfather, who had just died. I had nothing else to fill my empty days with, so I started work on this book. While researching it - watching lots of movies, talking to moviemakers - I became interested in movies and started making documentaries. "
Movies
Grandfather
Work
" As a filmmaker, I'm interminably curious and nosy, but certain times you meet people and think, 'I don't want to push you too hard because I can see this is painful for you.' "
Think
Push
You
" Coming from documentaries, my biggest challenge was to understand actors' psychologies. American actors take it all very seriously; British actors don't enter into all this methody way of doing things. "
Doing
Challenge
American
" Despite the limitations of the bulky 16mm camera and 10-minute film magazines, 'The Anderson Platoon' feels as spontaneous and fresh as any films that have come out of the Afghan or Iraq wars. "
Film
Camera
Spontaneous
" Documentary makers use other people's lives as their raw material, and that is morally indefensible. "
Raw
Other
People
" Elvis Presley's estate is making 30 million a year, and they say that Marley shouldn't be, but he is from a much poorer part of the world, and a lot more people need the money. "
Year
World
Say
" Every film that is made about the past is always a reflection of the present. "
Always
Present
Reflection
" Everyone's got to make one submarine drama in their life. "
Drama
Life
Submarine
" For everybody in the world, the answers to the mysteries in your life usually lie in your childhood, your upbringing, and your parents. "
Parents
Childhood
World
" For me, the aim of making any film like this, any film about an artist, would be to send you back to the art. "
Art
You
Me
" For me, what works well about 'Life in a Day' is that it's emotionally affecting without being manipulative. It really does make you think about the connectivity of the world, the similarities and differences. It shows the experiences we all go through: birth, childhood, falling in love, having kids, getting ill, dying. "
Childhood
World
Think
" I always loved digging away at the story, trying to find out things that people don't want you to find out and piecing it all together. I love the treasure hunt aspect of it, the thrill of the chase. "
Loved
People
Story
" I can't claim my grandfather's work has influenced mine directly, but his life certainly inspired me to follow this path. "
Work
Grandfather
Life
" I did not want to depict Al Gashey as evil. I wanted him to come across as someone who did what he did for reasons that were compelling. Whether or not we agree with him is a different matter. "
Him
Matter
Someone
" I don't read many young adult books. "
Young Adult
Young
Many
" I don't think life gets any better than sitting in the sun while a legend of French cinema tells you stories about making 'Belle de Jour' and other wonderful films, and eating great food. "
Life
Great
Food
" I don't think of myself particularly as a Scottish director, but you are what you are because the first ten years of your life, and where you spend them, brand you. In that sense, I'll always be a Scottish director. "
Myself
Always
You
" I find it really difficult when you make a movie where it is set in Russia and everyone speaks in English. It drives me crazy. "
Find
You
Russia
" If there is a tendency in modern television I hate, it is the unstoppable march of the dramatic reconstruction to tell the stories of anything from an ancient Egyptian battle to the early life of Paul Gascoigne. "
Television
Battle
Early
" If there's a principle really worth sticking up for, I'll go the whole way. "
Worth
Go
Principle
" If you can understand, you can feel compassion. "
Understand
Feel
Compassion
" If you go to pretty much everywhere in the developing world, you will find Bob Marley murals, and you'll find people playing his music. "
World
You
Will
" If you want to do 'Sword & Sandals' movies, people think that means it equals 'epic.' "
People
You
Want
" I like to take a little of what I learned in fiction and apply it to documentary and vice versa. "
Like
Documentary
Little
" I love Humphrey Jennings. People ask me who my favorite documentary maker is, and he's certainly in the top three. "
People
Love
Ask
" I love submarine movies. "
Submarine
Movies
Love
" I'm a cynical person who's normally attracted to the dark side of things. "
Dark
Dark Side
Person
" I'm not doing any more music films! "
More
Films
Doing
" I'm not particularly ethnically Scottish; I have one grandfather who is Scottish, although he's called Macdonald, and you don't get a lot more Scottish than that. The Scottish part of my family are from Skye, and I've always been very aware of that - always been very attracted to Scottish subject matter, I guess. "
Grandfather
Always
Family
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