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" I think that for the actors, the last thing that they want is a director that's not watching, a director that goes 'Okay, it sounded good to me,' and they were doing something else or preoccupied with something else because they were worried about the light changing. "

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" I've always been interested in how to present something that relates to our reality - which is not really... I don't even know if documentary itself does as good a job. It has its own problems in trying to get at the reality of the situation. "

Gus Van Sant

Own

Problems

Reality

" I think that in some cases, I've made films that have a sentimental quality, at least as part of the film. "

" The dark comedies tend to be in a non-releasable area. There can be romantic comedies. There can be dramas. But there's no 'dark comedy' inbox for the advertising. "

" If it were up to the executives, they probably wouldn't have directors at all. "

Gus Van Sant

Executives

Directors

" The biopic also wasn't a form that I necessarily believed in, because you can never really get it right, you know? It's also a form that's very popular - the straight-ahead biopic. "

" When I was 14, I felt very rundown; I had a home to go to, but I felt like I was 60 or something, older than I feel now. And I don't know if it's something that happens at 14, or whether it was adolescence or whether I was gay, or closeted gay, or whatever it was, I felt that. "

" The artist himself is actually the subject in everything after, say, 1900. Eventually, art becomes so removed from the community that you have to know about the artist before you can even look at the painting, because there is a conceptual idea going on. "

" I have my ideas of what a good documentary is, but drama is a different animal because you're arranging everything. "

" If you put up posters around town for high-school kids, high-school kids will come. If you're casting politicians, you can't put up posters and have politicians come down. "

Gus Van Sant

You

Politicians

" Usually, when I read something, I'm looking for the story first. And then, when I re-read it, I check every part of it to see whether every scene is necessary. You imagine yourself watching the movie, to see whether or not you're losing the through-line of the story. "

" For all the boredom the straight life brings, it's not too bad. "

" One of the things that is devastating is I realise I haven't been living a different life than when I was, like, 12. I'm shocked at how reclusive I've been since then. I was unaware of it until recently. "

" The things that inform student culture are created and controlled by the unseen culture, the sociological aspects of our climbing culture, our 'me' generation, our yuppie culture, our SUVs, or, you know, shopping culture, our war culture. "

" Wong Kar-Wai is a really great inspiration. He's always referred to as the Jimi Hendrix of filmmaking. "

" If a movie isn't released, it's one thing, but if you know it will be, it's nice to have closure and see it come out. "

" Usually people just hire me. "

" I mean, I think I'm pretty sentimental. "

" The area of teenage life is not necessarily rarefied; we've all gone through that period. It's not as rarefied as a western or a space adventure or a gangster film, but it has its own dynamic. "

" I hadn't made a big-budget film, and in Hollywood there's a sort of man and boys situation. You're a man, you make $80 million movies! As if it's harder to make an $80 million movie. Well, I guess businesswise it is because you have more executives to argue with. "

" I was originally a painter, and I made films sort of as an extension of that, and then I started to try to make dramatic films because the early films were experimental films. "

" I've always been attracted to temporary families. "

" I'm usually trying to react to what the actors are coming up with. And then the environment, and then the story. "

Gus Van Sant

Environment

Story

" I had never had a positive leading character - somebody that wasn't an antihero, or who wasn't more of a guy that you're supposed to be on the side of. "

Gus Van Sant

Character

Positive

" Death Valley is really wide-open - it's bigger than Rhode Island - and it's less a part of California than an ungoverned territory, so there's lots of weird cops-and-robbers stuff going on. "

" The reason I know about 'Tomb Raider' is from when I was researching 'Elephant.' It was 1999, and I was trying to research the Columbine-massacre kids, and they had played video games, and I, at the time, had never really seen one. It was a world I didn't know. "

" Because I didn't have brothers, I was always interested in the kids down the street that had four brothers in their family, so I became one of them - but it was not my family. "

" Well, I want to do everything in sort of a documentary style, ever since I started in the '80s. "

" When you get to be 23, 24 or 25, you start to freeze up and become an adult. "

Gus Van Sant

Adult

You

" Free time keeps me going. It's just something that's always been a part of my life. I was originally a painter, and I made films sort of as an extension of that, and then I started to try to make dramatic films because the early films were experimental films. "

Gus Van Sant

Early

Free

" I think over the course of 14 films, I'm returning to a place that I know to tell a story... the same way Spielberg returned to fantasy, Lucas returned to the 'Star Wars' saga, or John Ford returned to the western. "