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" It's a very sweet and often problematic situation where people feel like they know me and they're concerned for me. It creates these strange little intimate moments. "
Mike Mills
Know
Feel
Sweet
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" I'm not a craftsman of graphics or art or film. I'm more of an idea generator and manufacturer. "
Mike Mills
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More
" I think that talking about the personal specificity, personal details, is how you get the big, big audiences - by talking about your relationships or your personal tragedies. If you reach out with that energy, you'll touch people. "
Mike Mills
Think
Energy
You
" I am intrigued by inanimate objects. They're a piece of history, someone's statement and ideas of life. "
Mike Mills
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Someone
I Am
" My graffiti really comes more from a May '68, sort of Situationist vibe than the hip-hop world. I think a real graffiti artist would find me a poser. "
Mike Mills
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Find
Hip-Hop
" I am definitely writing letters to lots of directors in my mind when I'm making a film. I'm chasing Woody Allen and Godard and Milos Forman and all these people. "
Mike Mills
Mind
Writing
Film
" When a film works, the director had a lot to do with that, but the director also didn't have a lot to do with that. There are so many moving parts. It's really about being open to how the river is flowing and trying to get on the river. "
Mike Mills
River
Trying
Moving
" The oldest sibling always knows things that the younger ones don't. "
Mike Mills
Sibling
Oldest
Always
" L.A. is so isolated and unhip in a way; it gives you room to figure out who you are and explore more personal stuff. "
Mike Mills
Way
You
Personal
" Humans are vulnerable, messy little animals and that's normal. And all I want to do is make a space for that in my films. "
Mike Mills
Messy
Animals
Normal
" If you ask me, the place that a story happens is as equal character. It's almost like an ecological viewpoint: These people are living in this piece of land, and in this piece of land in this time this is possible. For me, I almost think location first. It's time first - what year is it - then where are we, and then who is in it. "
Mike Mills
Character
People
Time
" I would hate to think I'm promoting sadness as an aesthetic. But I grew up in not just a family but a town and a culture where sadness is something you're taught to feel shame about. You end up chronically desiring what can be a very sentimental idea of love and connection. A lot of my work has been about trying to make a space for sadness. "
Mike Mills
Hate
Culture
Family
" Grief and memory go together. After someone dies, that's what you're left with. And the memories are so slippery yet so rich. "
Mike Mills
Together
Grief
Memories
" The weird thing about grief, for me at least, was when each of my parents died, for a year or two afterwards I was pretty wildly brave - just willing to take life on. "
Mike Mills
Parents
Weird
Me
" My experience, with both my parents, is that grief has a lot of down, sad things, but I was also really emotionally raw, in the first year after each of them passed. Flowers smelled more intensely, my relationships were hotter, and I was more willing to risk. I was going for it a lot more. I was 'unsober' and I wasn't playing by my rules. "
Mike Mills
Parents
Grief
Flowers
" There is a drunkenness to grief, which is good. "
Mike Mills
Which
Drunkenness
Good
" It's funny now how much we look at - whatever you want to call it: art, design, culture stuff, film - online, and how in the online world, you're instantly global. "
Mike Mills
World
Design
Funny
" There's great sadness and life doesn't work out like you would want, on a lot of levels, but there's no need to feel all alone. This happens to everybody, so there's no self-pity. This is the ride that humans are on, and all of it is essential for our natural part of it. "
Mike Mills
Ride
Life
Great
" Over and over again, I'm trying to express or communicate these big and small struggles to the world, and really to myself. "
Mike Mills
Small
Trying
World
" Life doesn't just happen; it's constructed through the history of power. And that's something I am interested in and so is the art world: a world that's trying to engage socially, with a leftist slant, to work out how we got here. "
Mike Mills
Life
I Am
Art
" OK, so my parents were married in 1955 and my mom knew my dad was gay and my dad knew he was gay and so I was, like, 'Why in the heck did you get married?' Like, what was going on? What was that time? It's like this crazy paradox that my whole life is based on, or my family's based on. So I spent a lot of time trying to understand '55. "
Mike Mills
Time
Family
Life
" There's some movies I watch, they're kind of like my anti-anxiety pill, my anti-depressant pill. I watch them at least once or twice a month probably. And I never stop learning from them as a filmmaker. "
Mike Mills
Movies
Watch
Stop
" My dad's gay experiences really had a very positive influence on me and my straight relationships - how to better accept all the weirdness and ambiguity and ups and downs and paradoxes. I knew from the beginning I was writing about love. "
Mike Mills
Love
Writing
Positive
" I guess I watch movies to make myself happier a lot. "
Mike Mills
Myself
Movies
Happier
" One good and bad thing about New York is there's so much exciting stuff and so many people doing something interesting. I actually find in New York that you become more careerist and more focused on what's the newest, hippest thing. "
Mike Mills
People
You
New York