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" I have zero strategy for my career - like, zero. I could get as much satisfaction about doing a $20,000 shot film the same way I could do a $100 million film with a bunch of effects. "
Neill Blomkamp
Doing
Career
Satisfaction
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" 'District 9' was a singular anti-Apartheid metaphor, and 'Elysium' is a more general metaphor about immigration and how the First World and Third World meet. But the thing that I like the most about the metaphor is that it can be scaled to suit almost any scenario. "
Neill Blomkamp
Meet
World
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" If you don't have something that glues the audience to the screen, you're in trouble. "
Neill Blomkamp
Something
You
Audience
" I like where we're going with technology and global integration, but the fact that corporations and dollars rule everything in our lives, I don't like it. This isn't the Hollywood I wanted to be part of. "
Neill Blomkamp
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Everything
Technology
" What I do is spend too much time thinking. Most of the time I just walk around annoyed. Would I describe myself as relatively happy, I suppose, but society gets to me. And the people that have mastered life seem to not care, and then they die, and then the grenade goes off. "
Neill Blomkamp
Myself
Walk
Time
" I think naturally I'm a very visual kind of person. If I wasn't in filmmaking, I'd be in something related to visuals. And I used to actually work as a visual-effects artist. "
Neill Blomkamp
Artist
Filmmaking
Kind
" If there isn't a deep core reason for a film existing, what is the point? For me to be known as a filmmaker that makes films that have a point, I'm stoked. "
Neill Blomkamp
Me
Point
Film
" I still really love the world and the universe and the mythology of 'Halo.' If I was given control, I would really like to do that film. But that's the problem. When something pre-exists, there's this idea of my own interpretation versus 150 other people involved with the film's interpretation of the same intellectual property. "
Neill Blomkamp
Problem
World
Control
" I think growing up in South Africa, and then moving to Canada, I'm just genuinely interested in the difference between the First World and the Third World, immigration, and how the new, globalized world is beginning to operate. All of those things run through my mind a lot. "
Neill Blomkamp
Mind
Beginning
World
" I want to make a film that is commercially successful because that means that the larger cinema-going audience around the world like the movie, which is my goal. That's my job, to make films that people respond to. "
Neill Blomkamp
Successful
People
Goal
" The main stuff I like is from the late '60s to the early '90s. That's the stuff I love. It's the James Cameron's and the Paul Verhoven stuff. I guess when I was younger, 'Star Wars' had an influence. "
Neill Blomkamp
Late
Early
Influence
" When any young director gets hired by a studio to do a $125 million film based on a preexisting piece of intellectual property, they're climbing into the meat grinder. And what you're coming out with on the other side is a generic, heavily studio-controlled pile of garbage that ends up on the side of Burger King wrappers. "
Neill Blomkamp
Burger
Garbage
Intellectual
" I'm a massive hater of 3D. I don't like it at all. For me, you go to a movie theatre and you want to be taken to a place and transported to a place and be in that environment, and I know 3D is meant to do that, but the effect for me is the reverse. I feel like I'm looking though muddy water, and I can't really see the image. "
Neill Blomkamp
Theatre
Looking
Me
" I actually think Johannesburg represents the future. My version of what I think the world is going to become looks like Johannesburg. "
Neill Blomkamp
Think
World
Looks
" I think filmmakers in general are, as the tools become more and more advanced, you're able to tell stories in a way that I think is more realistic. The technology just wasn't there up until pretty recently, and it takes a bit of time for the normal artistic way of approaching something to become a mainstream thing. "
Neill Blomkamp
Tools
Way
You
" I think that 'Elysium' the movie is unrealistic, with the space station and everything. I think 'Elysium' the metaphor is completely realistic: it's exactly where we're going. "
Neill Blomkamp
Space
Everything
Think
" On one hand, I think people are destined for something incredible if we don't wipe ourselves out, but I think we're going to wipe 90 percent of ourselves out. "
Neill Blomkamp
Going
Think
People
" High-level actors can be all about their close-ups and the size of their trailers. I'd heard these horror stories of how a really powerful actor can come in and change your script. "
Neill Blomkamp
Change
Horror
Size
" I just want to make films that have enough of a budget to pull off high-level imagery but also have a budget that is low enough that I can do what I want. "
Neill Blomkamp
Budget
Enough
I Can
" The concept of even having fans is still kind of weird to me. I really just feel like a filmmaker that is only just finding my foot in and is beginning to participate in Hollywood and making films. So the idea of any kind of fandom or people that are waiting for something that I may release is very distant in my mind. "
Neill Blomkamp
Waiting
Beginning
Me
" A lot of parts of L.A. are interchangeable with suburbs in Joburg. Very big, ostentatious houses with palm trees and lawns. Lawns are very important. Never underestimate lawns. "
Neill Blomkamp
Important
Underestimate
Trees
" 'District 9', 'Elysium' and 'Chappie' were all born out of some visual concept first. 'Chappie' is the imagery, because I think I'm a visual person first, of this ridiculous robot character. It's much more comedy based and in an unusual setting. "
Neill Blomkamp
Think
Person
Comedy
" If you just compare South Africans to the rest of the world, I think that white South Africans, and especially English-speaking white South Africans, are exactly the same as Brits or Australians or New Zealanders or Canadians or Americans. "
Neill Blomkamp
You
New
Rest
" 'Chappie' would be like 'RoboCop,' but hilarious. If you mixed 'Robocop' with 'E.T.' and it was... funny, that's what it is. "
Neill Blomkamp
Would
Funny
Mixed
" There are loads of sociopolitical, racial, class and future-planet situations that really interest me, but I'm not really interested in making a film about them in a film that feels like reality because people view that in a different way. I like using science fiction to talk about subjects through the veneer of science fiction. "
Neill Blomkamp
Talk
View
Me
" A lot of America is kind of done. People have been making films about it for 100 years. Everything to me feels used up. But Jo-Burg feels unbelievably inspirational to me. "
Neill Blomkamp
Done
Me
America
" If something is as smart as you, do you treat it differently if it isn't a human? "
Neill Blomkamp
Smart
Differently
Human
" There has to be the popcorn genre element, or I don't engage the same way. I like action and vehicle design and guns and computer graphics as much as I like allegory. It's a constant balancing game. I want audiences to be on this rollercoaster that fits the Hollywood mould, but I also want them to absorb my observations. "
Neill Blomkamp
Design
Want
Hollywood
" In a lot of the really impoverished areas of Johannesburg you see these packets of cheesy puffs which are like 6 feet long and the width of a basketball, and they're transparent and they have like 10,000 cheesy puffs in them, and you can buy that for like 50 cents. It's kind of a weird treat that you'd see people having in the townships. "
Neill Blomkamp
Long
Basketball
Feet
" I think that people who make films and think they're changing the world are sorely mistaken. If that really is your goal, there are far better ways to do it. I'm making politically observant films for audiences. "
Neill Blomkamp
Better
Far
Goal
" I think the world of 'District 9' has a lot of race and oppression-based ideas that I would still like to explore in that world. "
Neill Blomkamp
Think
World
Explore