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" 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. "

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" Once you're directing, you're kind of in a certain mode, where you're taking whatever is on the page and forming it into the film that you think it might want to be. So whether it's my writing or not, I still try to work with it in the same way. "

Gus Van Sant

Kind

You

Writing

" Free time keeps me going. "

" 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. "

" I don't think American independent films have ever really been particularly experimental, except for the original guys from the '60s who were huge influences, like Stan Brakhage, Robert Breer, and Stan van der Beek. They were the true independents. "

" You know, I don't think I had a concept of what I would be or do. "

" In high school, I read 'Silas Marner' and I was very attracted to this character - he was very rundown and he'd just stop, and things would happen around him. "

" 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 wanted to do a comedy. "

" Usually people just hire me. "

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

" Gay marriage is the last bastion of, to me... as a legal, ceremonial, sentimental and religious side, it's one of the last steps. Retaining your job being one of the earlier steps, like, not getting kicked out of your job because you're gay. "

" 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. "

" If you don't have the story and the unfolding of the trajectory of the saga, it's like getting in a car and not having any gas. "

Gus Van Sant

Having

Car

" I was once a shameless, full-time dope fiend. "

" There is a way that a younger person can accept the inevitable problem that they're going to die, whereas somebody a little bit older might be overcome. "

Gus Van Sant

Person

Die

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

" 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'm thinking of remaking 'Psycho' again. Doing a third remake. The idea this time is to really change it - we're talking about doing a punk rocker setting. "

" 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

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

" Yeah, I try to be really calm. "

" 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. "

" My department is to get actors to do stuff. "

" The media has gone through lots of things that make it a less foreign thing to have your lead character be gay. "

" I'd come into filmmaking as a painter so, for me, making 'Good Will Hunting' was experimental because I didn't know how to do it. "

Gus Van Sant

Know

Good

" I think that what I'm attracted to is people who are wild. But the self-destructive side comes out of the wild side. The wildness is very different from me. That's why I think I like it. "

Gus Van Sant

Why

Think

" 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. "

" There is a common theme, though, in the stories I have told, which are usually associations of characters or families that are formed outside of a family circle. "

" I find it interesting, the different rules that apply to journalism and drama, even though journalism has become more and more about entertainment, and entertainment has become more and more about journalism. "

" In rare cases, I've had music before I shot the movie. I think that for 'Good Will Hunting' I had an Elliot Smith record or a couple of them and I just somehow felt like the sound had something to it that reminded me of the story. So in that case there was music beforehand. "