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" Directing is all tied up with childhood loneliness. It's such an odd thing to end up doing. "
Paul Greengrass
End
Childhood
Up
Related Quotes:
" I spent my 20s making film after film, often in very adverse conditions. You'd fly back from somewhere - Beirut, the Falklands, South Africa - on Saturday, and you'd have 24 hours to cut your film, and it would go out on Monday night. "
Paul Greengrass
Back
Fly
Monday
" Action is only really compelling when it reveals character - character revealed through action, and not action for its own sake. "
Paul Greengrass
Action
Through
Own
" I am interested in seeing if you can create on film pieces that feel contemporary and urgent. "
Paul Greengrass
Seeing
I Am
Film
" The one mistake you must never make is to agree to make a film or sign on to film that you don't believe in. Most importantly because it's unfair on that. It's not about you; it's just not fair on that project because you're doing it a profound disservice because you're not serving it - you're uncommitted, ultimately. "
Paul Greengrass
Believe
You
Mistake
" Acting is many things. Acting is playing lines, of course, but it's much more profound than that. Acting is truth-telling and trying to find the truth in a human situation, which will be sketched out by a screenwriter with all the skill that a screenwriter can do; but in the end, that's just the map of the journey. "
Paul Greengrass
Journey
Acting
End
" I don't storyboard like some. I mean, all directors are different. I plan meticulously - really meticulously. "
Paul Greengrass
Some
Mean
Different
" I've seen a lot of political violence in my life. I know what it looks like. I know what it smells like. I know what motivates young men to do it. I've talked to them about it. I know what victims feel like, you know? I know the abominable effect it has on politics. I know how intractable it is. "
Paul Greengrass
Men
Political
Politics
" I'd always suspected my face wouldn't fit in drama departments. And it never did! "
Paul Greengrass
Face
Never
Fit
" Why are people saying it's too soon? Like the people on that flight, we need to agree about what to do about terrorism. And I think we need to have that conversation now. "
Paul Greengrass
Now
People
Saying
" It's a circus life, the movies. It's a lot of travelling, a lot of antisocial hours; there's a lot of it that's about escaping from life. "
Paul Greengrass
Travelling
Circus
Life
" This new global economy, it's all based on the sea routes. "
Paul Greengrass
Sea
Based
New
" All directors make films in individual ways. But the classical kind of view of filmmaking is that you have a script, and it's very linear. There's a script, then you're going to shoot the script ,and then you cut that, and then that's the end of the film. And that's never really been how I've seen it. "
Paul Greengrass
You
Kind
Film
" The most important thing as a filmmaker, the hardest journey you'll have, is to find your point of view. "
Paul Greengrass
Important
Find
Journey
" In my little imperfect way, what I'm trying to do is understand the world. As a filmmaker, you realize as you get older that each film is part of a dialogue you're having with yourself. That started when I was working in documentaries. And in a way, I've never deviated from it. "
Paul Greengrass
Trying
Understand
World
" I don't want to feel what I'm creating on film has an outcome that is preordained. I don't think of the world as a place with a divinity that shapes our end. What you try to do with film is create, as far as you possibly can, an unfolding present - a theatre in which an outcome happens and is tested. "
Paul Greengrass
Place
End
Theatre
" Very few people do bad things because they're bad. They generally do bad things because they think they're the right thing to do, but they're misplaced. "
Paul Greengrass
The Right Thing
Think
Bad
" I think there's something about a character facing the huge problems and challenges of the contemporary world and meeting them with - head on with courage, allowing for darkness and mistake, but ultimately always moral. That's incredibly, incredibly inspiring, and that's honestly what I think. "
Paul Greengrass
Darkness
Mistake
Courage
" I'll always see myself as a British filmmaker, powerfully so. "
Paul Greengrass
British
See
Myself
" Some filmmakers are more eclectic than others. I'm not one of those! I'm interested in what I'm interested in, which is films about the world, about what's going on. I started in TV documentaries with 'World in Action,' and those interests feed into the films I make now. "
Paul Greengrass
More
Going
Action
" Finding where to put the camera is probably the most important thing you have to learn when you're a young director, and it's something that's a mixture of instinct and technique. "
Paul Greengrass
Learn
You
Camera
" Acting is many things, and one is an exercise of will. In any given scene, you're trying to find where the drama and conflict is and then deploy the actors to play at that point of conflict with precision, control, and complete will. "
Paul Greengrass
You
Acting
Conflict
" I always tell young film-makers, 'Find the song that only you can sing.' It doesn't just come to you. It's trial and error and disappointment before you find, slowly but surely, the confidence to express your film-making identity. "
Paul Greengrass
Confidence
Identity
Disappointment
" Ultimately, if you look at all my films from 'Bloody Sunday' on, they're steeped in a post-9/11 atmosphere. 'United 93' is directly about 9/11, of course, but every one of the movies deals with paranoia, mistrust, and fear. "
Paul Greengrass
Fear
Deals
Look
" My films express me, my sense of rhythm, my sense of impact, my sense of kinetic energy. I like films to move, but I like also clear storytelling and characters, and most of all, I like authentic emotion. "
Paul Greengrass
Energy
Storytelling
Rhythm
" With a franchise movie, it's got to turn the wheels of the industry, and the studio has to have them. So you start with a release date. They say we're going to make a new 'Bourne' film, and it comes out summer of X. Then they start on a script, and invariably, the script is not ready in time. "
Paul Greengrass
Start
They Say
Time
" Making movies is both entirely ludicrous and incredibly hard. It's a preposterous way to spend your time. You give up a lot for the privilege of doing it, and one of the things you get are relationships of immense trust that you see forged in situations of immense stress. "
Paul Greengrass
Time
Stress
Movies
" With the dramatic canvas, I found you could still operate with the documentarist's observational eye. "
Paul Greengrass
You
Canvas
Dramatic
" Studio people are bright. Empowering. They don't want to have to interfere creatively. That's their horror story, too. "
Paul Greengrass
Too
Bright
Horror
" It's no good in a scene to have one actor lie down because the scene says it's the other actor's moment. Each actor has to believe that with extra will, the outcome of a scene can be different. An actor can win the scene if he exerts the most powerful will in that moment. "
Paul Greengrass
Lie
Moment
Powerful
" Deep down, all directors feel like frauds - because it's built into the nature of the job. You're the jack of all trades and the master of none. The cameraman knows the camera, the sound man knows the sound equipment - and you? You can't do anything: You can't do the acting, you can't dress the set, you don't record the sound or shoot the images. "
Paul Greengrass
Camera
Nature
Deep