Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" 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
Related Quotes:
" 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
" '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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" I don't spend a lot of time in nature. Probably less than most people that live in urban Texas. "
Shane Carruth
Texas
People
Urban
" 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'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
" 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. "
Shane Carruth
Storytelling
Remember
Me
" 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 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. "
Shane Carruth
Things
Kid
Think
" 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
" 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
" 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. "
Shane Carruth
Good
Choices
Calm
" The only thing I can ever do is make a film that I can respond to. I could not make a romantic comedy for college girls. I wouldn't know how that works. "
Shane Carruth
I Can
College
Comedy
" It's interesting because I don't ever want to ask a better question than I can answer, if that makes sense. I find that frustrating as a viewer. Compelling questions, while not easy, are easier than compelling answers. "
Shane Carruth
Questions
Interesting
Easy
" 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
" 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
" I'm interested in making something that moves quickly, that hopefully is compelling minute-by-minute but really packed densely with exploration. I'm very interested in how re-visitable we can make films. If we can get them closer to a music album, then it's not such an arduous process to revisit, and exploration can be a bit more cryptic. "
Shane Carruth
Exploration
Process
Music
" 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. "
Shane Carruth
You
Problems
Movies
" 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
" 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 love to work. It's the idea of having someone else tell you how to make your film or how to sell it - that's the part I can't really deal with. I would rather do 1,000 things that are work than deal with one thing that's a political problem. "
Shane Carruth
Problem
Work
You
" 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 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. "
Shane Carruth
Story
Music
Believe
" 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
" 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 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. "
Shane Carruth
Got
School
Software