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" 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

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" One of the bad things about being a filmmaker, about being me, is I can hardly read a book anymore because every time I read something, I have a poaching mentality, like, 'Oh, can this be a movie?' "

Derek Cianfrance

" When I was a kid, I had two nightmares: one was nuclear war, and the other was that my parents would get a divorce; and when I was twenty, they split up, and I just felt like I needed to confront all those things that scared me as a kid - entering young adulthood and trying to have relationships. "

Derek Cianfrance

" I love actors that are brave, that are courageous. And courage to me is not the absence of fear, it's the presence of fear, and they go to places that really scare them, because as an audience, that's where you feel danger. "

Derek Cianfrance

" 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

" Right now, I think I have time to be three things, in no particular order: a father, a husband, and a filmmaker. That's why I don't go out - I have no space for it. I feel like one of those main things would suffer. "

Derek Cianfrance

" I don't have a life, really. I take my kids to school, and I go home, and I write. Then I go pick my kids up, make them dinner, put them to bed, and write some more. "

Derek Cianfrance

" I don't think we ever know 100 percent of a person, even ourselves, but I think in families, you get closer to people's secrets and people's darkness - and their light, the full contrast of a person. "

Derek Cianfrance

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" I feel like the job of an artist is to confront their own darkness and their own demons and fears. And I want to make movies that feel human up on the screen. I don't really relate to dudes wearing spandex and capes. "

Derek Cianfrance

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" I'm not the greatest reader. I feel like I have a bit of dyslexia or something, and that's probably why I became a filmmaker. I have the need to communicate, the need to tell stories; and the need to understand stories led me to movies. "

Derek Cianfrance

" 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

" Every moment is, in some ways, eternal. Once you put something into the world, it stays there. "

Derek Cianfrance

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" I grew up Catholic, so I feel guilty about everything. "

Derek Cianfrance

" I don't really collect anything. I grew up in a family that collected things, and then they'd get sick, and people die, and then they have their basements full of stuff that goes from one box to the next, so I try not to get sentimental with stuff. I just try to collect memories; I guess that would be it. "

Derek Cianfrance

" 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

" I love people that work with passion and love. When you make choices that way, there's reverberations, consequences. That's what I'm interested in, that echo, that ripple of choice. "

Derek Cianfrance

" Lars Ulrich, he was my hero growing up. I wanted to be like him. I played the drums. "

Derek Cianfrance

" 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