Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" Film is a collaborative process, absolutely, but I am a control freak. "

Related Quotes:

" I can honestly say, there was a moment when I was writing 'Upstream Color' where I fell so hard for what it was becoming that I couldn't think of anything else. I was absolutely secure in this story in the way I'm rarely secure about anything else in my life. "

" It's a risk, but I'm sort of ready to let go of thinking of movies as books that you can watch. The notion of, 'If I put the narrative blocks in the right order, this will solve all of my storytelling problems.' No, it won't, and you end up with little more than books on film. "

" I'm constantly surprised by... an orange will roll off a table, and I'll catch it before I knew it was falling. Something happens there. We could write it off and say, 'Subconsciously I knew that was happening,' but there's so many things every day - I'm amazed by how little we know. "

" I will be making films, and I'm going to keep working, no matter what I have to do. And I don't plan to ever ask for permission from anybody. "

" I hate even the idea of a synopsis. When stories are really working, when you're providing subtextual exploration and things that are deeply layered, you're obligated to not say things out loud. "

" My favorite films are the ones that I walk away from and I know I saw a story. "

" I have a really, really hard time sitting down and watching a TV show, except I'm apparently willing to watch the same episode of 'It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia,' like, seven times. "

" I've heard stories about movies that are really maybe difficult and really dramatic and good, but they are being sold as romantic comedies. All it's going to do is just... that's hurting the work, because that just makes it impossible for anyone to see it correctly. "

" I feel like math and writing are the same thing. You're putting together a lot of complex things to satisfy different requirements. It's got to be aesthetically pleasing; it's got to have subtext; it's got to convey information. "

" I am obsessed with story. I had a late awakening in life. In college was the first time that I understood what you could do with a story and what a good novel is - literary value and subtext and irony and everything. "

" I stole a ton of film language from Steven Soderbergh and 'The Limey.' It's the definition of elliptical. It was the first movie I remember that introduced me to storytelling that isn't just one scene after another, and that things can be mixed up in the way that real experiences can. "

" Many of my favorite films, if someone were to tell me simply what they're about, I probably wouldn't be that interested. Plot often has so little to do with what's at the heart of a film. "

" Whether you are liberal or conservative, people seem to know the talking points for whatever the issue of the day is. Very rarely does it seem like these are opinions that people are coming up with themselves; it's like they watched the right cable news channel, and now they know what they are supposed to think, and they repeat that. "

" I got a degree in math, from not a good school in Texas, and then I went to work as a software engineer. Just not glamorous at all. "

" I've always been anxious about 'Primer.' There's good things about it, but all I've seen for a long time is the flaws. "

" As a viewer, that's work I respond to - work that I know is singular in some way. If I'm being challenged by something on screen, if I don't quite know why it's happening, I want to know I can do the work of pulling it apart and that there'll be something satisfactory about it. If the architecture is sound, you can be lyrical in execution. "

" There is commerciality in storytelling, even in a film or a piece of literature. These things exist. That's why stories came to be: to hold attention and, while you're not looking, you'll get hopefully some nutritional value that the author has been working up. That's narrative; that's passing stuff down. "

" I love the concept of the romance that exists when people are broken. Like, the promise of a romance when you're at the bottom. I think that's infinitely compelling and romantic. "

" I came to filmmaking because it's my passion. I decided I can't have it distorted or marred by someone else deciding what it should be. "

" My job as an author - at least the way I think of it - is to make a story that is coded and puzzling enough to entice conversation and interpretation, but also to do the opposite: to make some things clear so that it is meaningful in some way, not just a random assemblage of ideas. "

" Probably the TV show I've watched the most is 'How It's Made' on the History Channel. I could watch 24 hours of 'How It's Made' and never get bored. Or 'Dirty Jobs' - that's even better! "

" I feel like we want to compartmentalise things and say, 'Well, that's emotional, artistic and subjective, while this is intellectual, objective and measured.' I have difficulty thinking that's the way we experience things. "

" I never set out to make a movie that was everything to everybody; if that were the case, we could all just take a picture of a tree and agree that the tree is beautiful and move on with our lives. I wouldn't even need to show up. "

" I don't read books on how to write screenplays just because I'm stubborn. So it's all sort of made up. "

" I had a really generic upbringing, I think, when it comes to viewing movies as a kid. I didn't really know what was out there or what was being tried. I was, like, 'E.T.' and 'Indiana Jones.' Those were the only things I knew existed. "

" I believe that filmmakers have to internalize the story and subtext so well that all of the departments can start to speak to each other - that music can speak to cinematography can speak to writing and back again. "

" I don't typically have a social life, I don't have a family, and I will stay up all night, every night, for days on end, to solve something that I think is solvable. And it's very frustrating sometimes, because I know that I'm like that, and it's not always a positive result. "

" I'm only interested in science fiction that's used as a literary device, a shortcut into something more exploratory or universal about our experience. That's why I think it was invented and why mythology was invented; it's a tool, not an end to itself. "

" Filmmaking is a thousand choices a day, and it's important to just let those choices potentially be informed by something deeper. "

" Going to grocery stores is almost my favorite thing to do to calm myself down. There's something about just walking aisle after aisle making mundane choices. 'Do I want that? No, I want the one that has the low sodium.' And that feels like a good exercise to be doing when there isn't anything to be doing. It's like a kick-starter in some way. "