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" After 'Place Beyond the Pines,' honestly, I was sick of myself. Sick of my own ideas. I wanted to do an adaptation, but everything I'd been reading, I just didn't understand it. "
Derek Cianfrance
Myself
Place
Reading
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" When I grew up, a director was Cecil B DeMille, a guy sitting down with a megaphone speaking. He was the voice of God, the image of God. When I went to start making docs, I quickly turned the megaphone to my ear not to my mouth. It's more about funneling in the words and listening as doc filmmaker. "
Derek Cianfrance
Voice
Words
God
" If you make a movie that's close to your heart, it will be close to other people's. "
Derek Cianfrance
People
Will
Your
" I feel similar to a lot of people. I don't feel unique. So what I'm trying to do in my films is provide something for people like me, but also a collection of scenes that instigate. "
Derek Cianfrance
Me
People
Feel
" I shot 'Blue Valentine' on 16mm for the past, and for the present on the Red Camera. I feel that both formats are valid. The stories should dictate the format we shoot on. Filmmakers should have a choice. "
Derek Cianfrance
Past
Camera
Blue
" I think 'GoodFellas' is just a perfect film. From an efficiency of storytelling standpoint, from an entertainment standpoint, from a performance standpoint, from a use of music standpoint, from a cinematography and editing standpoint - to me, it's just a perfect movie. "
Derek Cianfrance
Me
Music
Perfect
" I was a member of the VHS generation. I used to study movies as a kid because I had a VCR and could record a movie on HBO and just watch it repeatedly. "
Derek Cianfrance
Movies
Kid
Generation
" I think people need fantasy, but I think they also need to know that they're not being lied to. I think sometimes the fantasy can betray people and become more difficult for people's lives than just truth. I can't stand delusion. Delusion makes me sick. "
Derek Cianfrance
Me
Truth
People
" I grew up Catholic, so I feel guilty about everything. "
Derek Cianfrance
Feel
Catholic
Guilty
" There's one rule that I have on my movies, which is that anything that you want to do, you can do. But! There's a flip side to that, which is that anything I want you to do, give it a try also. "
Derek Cianfrance
Want
Side
You
" Seeing 'The Gospel According to St. Matthew' was an extraordinary experience because it made me realise that all the biblical stories and images I'd ignored as a child had sunk in by osmosis. I saw that my childhood was deeply rooted inside me. "
Derek Cianfrance
Child
Seeing
Me
" I'm not asking actors to act. I'm asking them to behave. I want to see their being, not how they can fake it. "
Derek Cianfrance
Want
Act
Asking
" To me, discomfort is a gift in the films that I'm making. "
Derek Cianfrance
Gift
Discomfort
Me
" I think book adaptations, the best one to me is like 'Brokeback Mountain.' Which is a short story, 21 pages, that expands so beautifully into a movie. "
Derek Cianfrance
Book
Think
Short
" We had all these smiley family pictures all over the walls of my house, but I always found those pictures to be odd because we weren't smiling all the time. I don't want to paint the picture of a total dysfunctional house, but there were a lot of arguments in that house. A lot of pain. "
Derek Cianfrance
Pain
Family
Smiling
" I've always thought that guns are a cowardly tool in the hands of men and women trying to solve problems with each other. And cowardly in the hands of filmmakers. It's taken so lightly in films. "
Derek Cianfrance
Hands
Women
Thought
" Look, pain is there in the world, and there's catharsis through that. I feel like there's... a rapture, if we can get through it, if we can confront things. "
Derek Cianfrance
Feel
Through
Like
" When we make these movies, you sign up for an experience. It's not just, 'Action! Cut!' There's not that safety in it. It's kind of a dangerous place to be. I mean, it is safe, but it gets personal. It's no longer about saying the lines. It's about really having an experience. "
Derek Cianfrance
Saying
Action
Experience
" Lars Ulrich, he was my hero growing up. I wanted to be like him. I played the drums. "
Derek Cianfrance
Him
Up
Hero
" There was a time in my early 20s when I would leave a movie theater and just feel so alone and lonely afterwards. I just felt like my life was nothing like those characters up on the screen, so perfect all the time. Why didn't I talk like that? Why don't I look like that? "
Derek Cianfrance
Alone
My Life
Time
" I never learned to be a writer. I never took screenwriting courses. I never read anyone's scripts. As a writer, my only guiding principle has been to write about things that scare me, write about things that make me feel vulnerable, write about things that will expose my deepest fears, so that's how I write. "
Derek Cianfrance
Feel
Never
Me
" I ask all my actors to do two things: I ask them to fail for me, and I ask them to surprise me. "
Derek Cianfrance
Ask
Things
Two
" I'm trying to be the coach. My actors are my players. They're doing things that I'm too cowardly to do myself. "
Derek Cianfrance
Trying
Doing
Myself
" In terms of Ray Liotta, when I was a teenager growing up in Colorado, I didn't have pictures of girls on my wall. I had pictures of Ray Liotta on my wall. Along with Mike Patton, he was one of my heroes. "
Derek Cianfrance
Growing Up
Pictures
Heroes
" It's like you take these great actors and put them in an aquarium of life and just watch them swim. That's what makes editing tough because you get all these beautiful, unplanned moments. "
Derek Cianfrance
Life
Great
Beautiful
" Making a film is like making a mixtape. You're collecting all this stuff and putting your favorite stuff into it: you have actors that you like, characters that you're interested in, moments you want to explore, themes you want to deal with, music that you want to put in. It's a pastiche of all these things that deal with how you see the world. "
Derek Cianfrance
World
Want
See
" There's something so glorious in giving control to the world. I think that's what I'm trying to do in my films - control the world but also let it be chaotic, let there be life. "
Derek Cianfrance
World
Control
Life
" My older brother gave me a cassette tape of Mr. Bungle, and I couldn't stop listening to it. I used to drive around Colorado in a Mustang II - it was when they got away from the muscle-car Mustangs, so it was sort of old lady. I couldn't go above 45 mph in that car, but I would drive around listening to Mr. Bungle. "
Derek Cianfrance
Brother
Car
Drive
" You turn on the news, there're no facts anymore. 'Here's what's happening today,' and then you cut to thirty minutes of people in little boxes, little windows, telling you their opinions on it. It seems like all the news is going on in the ticker-tape on the bottom of the news. It's all opinion, it's all editorial. "
Derek Cianfrance
Opinions
Today
People
" With each character in a movie, I'm looking for a human being. I'm looking for a person. And to me, I'm looking for a person that's full of strengths and weaknesses, a person that's full of successes and failures, a person that's full of joy and sorrow. I'm interested in people that are human beings that are alive. "
Derek Cianfrance
Looking
Me
Character
" I feel like the job in editing is to let the movie tell you what it is. So again, it's like sculpture. You just start taking away, you add a nose here, you cut off, like, the side of the cheek over here in the crease, and you have a face. But it really reveals to you what it means to be over time, and if you have enough time. "
Derek Cianfrance
Start
Enough
You