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

Derek Cianfrance

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" From making documentaries all these years, it doesn't feel right to lead someone. In narratives, I'm always trying to shoot as though it's really happening, and I trust my actors are going to make decisions that I'm going to be following. I want to follow them. "

Derek Cianfrance

" The only time I judge an actor on set is if they're not failing; if they get it right all the time, I start to question it. I feel like it's too easy. "

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

" You turn on the news, there're no facts anymore. 'Here's what's happening today,' and then you cut to thirty minutes of people in little boxes, little windows, telling you their opinions on it. It seems like all the news is going on in the ticker-tape on the bottom of the news. It's all opinion, it's all editorial. "

Derek Cianfrance

" Now, I love movies so much, but I find a lot of movies to be arrogant in the way they're kind of know-it-alls - they have perfect characters on the screen that know everything about themselves. "

Derek Cianfrance

" I think 'GoodFellas' is just a perfect film. From an efficiency of storytelling standpoint, from an entertainment standpoint, from a performance standpoint, from a use of music standpoint, from a cinematography and editing standpoint - to me, it's just a perfect movie. "

Derek Cianfrance

" When I cast great actors, I try to make extraordinary people ordinary, dealing with these extremely small intimate details of interpersonal relationships against an epic backdrop. "

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

" If you make a movie that's close to your heart, it will be close to other people's. "

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

" 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

" As a writer, I always peel back the layers, go to the most sensitive places uncomfortably close to the heart. "

Derek Cianfrance

" Seeing 'The Gospel According to St. Matthew' was an extraordinary experience because it made me realise that all the biblical stories and images I'd ignored as a child had sunk in by osmosis. I saw that my childhood was deeply rooted inside me. "

Derek Cianfrance

" To me, discomfort is a gift in the films that I'm making. "

Derek Cianfrance

" I have kids. I can't hardly watch an afternoon football game with them without having to turn off the TV during the commercials. It's too much. I don't know when violence was deemed such a cinematic thing. "

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

" There's something so great when you're watching a movie when you slowly get to know somebody more, because it's like a real relationship. "

Derek Cianfrance

" 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

" We had all these smiley family pictures all over the walls of my house, but I always found those pictures to be odd because we weren't smiling all the time. I don't want to paint the picture of a total dysfunctional house, but there were a lot of arguments in that house. A lot of pain. "

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

" 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 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

" When I cast someone in a movie, I have to absolutely trust who they are as a human being. Trust is the intangible of moviemaking. "

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

" 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

" When people think of biblical movies, they imagine sweeping epics like 'The Ten Commandments.' But 'The Gospel According to St. Matthew' is essentially a documentary about Jesus. It made me aware of how real life and personal experience can create more breathtaking, sensitive cinema than more sophisticated techniques. "

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

" 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

" 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