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" Filmmaking is a thousand choices a day, and it's important to just let those choices potentially be informed by something deeper. "
Shane Carruth
Day
Choices
Important
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" 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. "
Shane Carruth
Need
Tree
Move On
" 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. "
Shane Carruth
Romantic
People
Love
" 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. "
Shane Carruth
Life
Family
Think
" 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. "
Shane Carruth
Together
Information
Writing
" 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. "
Shane Carruth
Ask
Matter
Going
" 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. "
Shane Carruth
Romantic
Impossible
Good
" 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. "
Shane Carruth
Time
Long Time
Long
" From a completely financial standpoint, digital is starting to crack as far as an independent filmmaker's access to getting your story out there - Amazon, iTunes, all of those. It makes the prospect of doing it yourself - not easy by any means - but possible, maybe for the first time. "
Shane Carruth
Story
Financial
Time
" 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. "
Shane Carruth
Orange
Know
Falling
" 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. "
Shane Carruth
Work
Architecture
I Can
" 'Upstream Color' in particular, it's got to infect culture at some level in order to have a life of its own. Then it'll be judged, and it'll either live or it won't by its own merit, and history will decide whether it's relevant however long into the future. I think that's more than enough to hope for. "
Shane Carruth
Future
Think
Live
" 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. "
Shane Carruth
Think
Life
Moment
" 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. "
Shane Carruth
Someone
Filmmaking
Passion
" 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! "
Shane Carruth
Watch
Never
Dirty
" 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. "
Shane Carruth
Down
Watch
Time
" I don't read books on how to write screenplays just because I'm stubborn. So it's all sort of made up. "
Shane Carruth
Stubborn
Books
Just Because
" All I know is that as an audience member, I am less and less inclined to go to the theater. "
Shane Carruth
I Am
Audience
Theater
" In school, when I got into upper-level math, there would be times when I would wake up from a dream and have - not an answer, exactly, but a direction to pursue. My writing has always been like that. I wake up from dreams knowing which direction to go in. "
Shane Carruth
Writing
Wake Up
School
" 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. "
Shane Carruth
Opinions
Think
You
" 'The Master,' it was really important to me to go see that in the theater, but that's a very rare occurrence for me. I typically enjoy things on my laptop. I'm in bed; I can be able to pause them. "
Shane Carruth
I Can
Bed
Enjoy
" 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. "
Shane Carruth
Looking
Attention
You
" Film is a collaborative process, absolutely, but I am a control freak. "
Shane Carruth
Film
I Am
Am
" I find 'Fatal Attraction' really romantic. I really like the seduction. Almost every time I see it, I'm surprised when it goes dark. I know that's the claim to fame, but I key into how genuinely romantic it is. "
Shane Carruth
Key
Time
Romantic
" Any film that exists that is thorough, you can't give it to an audience of one and have that be effective communication. Communication involves an audience of many that have a conversation, put it through the ringer, filter it and then a sense of it coalesces. "
Shane Carruth
You
Film
Conversation
" 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. "
Shane Carruth
Good
Time
Life
" 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. "
Shane Carruth
Enough
Random
Job
" I think I'll always want to write and direct. I'm interested in producing and helping other people tell stories. But I'm still in love with writing and directing. "
Shane Carruth
Writing
People
Love
" When something is beautiful in math, everything is just perfectly lined up, and you see through sheer thought that something really beautiful can take place. "
Shane Carruth
Beautiful
You
Up
" I don't believe that narrative works when it's trying to teach a lesson or speak a factual truth. "
Shane Carruth
Speak
Truth
Trying
" 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. "
Shane Carruth
Think
Experience
End