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" 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
Life
Great
Beautiful
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" 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
Want
Side
You
" 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
You
Great
Relationship
" 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
Experience
Think
People
" Every moment is, in some ways, eternal. Once you put something into the world, it stays there. "
Derek Cianfrance
Some
Moment
You
" I feel like the job of an artist is to confront their own darkness and their own demons and fears. And I want to make movies that feel human up on the screen. I don't really relate to dudes wearing spandex and capes. "
Derek Cianfrance
Job
Demons
Artist
" I don't have a life, really. I take my kids to school, and I go home, and I write. Then I go pick my kids up, make them dinner, put them to bed, and write some more. "
Derek Cianfrance
School
Bed
Dinner
" I never learned to be a writer. I never took screenwriting courses. I never read anyone's scripts. As a writer, my only guiding principle has been to write about things that scare me, write about things that make me feel vulnerable, write about things that will expose my deepest fears, so that's how I write. "
Derek Cianfrance
Feel
Never
Me
" 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
Book
Think
Short
" I'm not asking actors to act. I'm asking them to behave. I want to see their being, not how they can fake it. "
Derek Cianfrance
Want
Act
Asking
" 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
Past
Camera
Blue
" 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
Movies
Kid
Generation
" When I was a kid, I had two nightmares: one was nuclear war, and the other was that my parents would get a divorce; and when I was twenty, they split up, and I just felt like I needed to confront all those things that scared me as a kid - entering young adulthood and trying to have relationships. "
Derek Cianfrance
Parents
War
Trying
" 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
Know
Darkness
People
" I was an audience member before I'm a filmmaker. All I've tried to do as a filmmaker was to make movies I want to see. "
Derek Cianfrance
Movies
See
Want
" One reason Cassavetes is a hero to me is that his movies grew with him; they reflected the stages of his life. He made movies about where he was at that time. That's what I want to do with my films. "
Derek Cianfrance
Want
Movies
Me
" 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
Saying
Action
Experience
" I don't really collect anything. I grew up in a family that collected things, and then they'd get sick, and people die, and then they have their basements full of stuff that goes from one box to the next, so I try not to get sentimental with stuff. I just try to collect memories; I guess that would be it. "
Derek Cianfrance
People
Die
Try
" When I grew up, a director was Cecil B DeMille, a guy sitting down with a megaphone speaking. He was the voice of God, the image of God. When I went to start making docs, I quickly turned the megaphone to my ear not to my mouth. It's more about funneling in the words and listening as doc filmmaker. "
Derek Cianfrance
Voice
Words
God
" I feel like the job in editing is to let the movie tell you what it is. So again, it's like sculpture. You just start taking away, you add a nose here, you cut off, like, the side of the cheek over here in the crease, and you have a face. But it really reveals to you what it means to be over time, and if you have enough time. "
Derek Cianfrance
Start
Enough
You
" There's this thing in Hollywood about the sympathetic character and likability. I've never understood that because the people I love most in my life are not likable all the time. My wife is not always likable. I'm certainly not always likable. My dad is not always likable. We're human beings. "
Derek Cianfrance
Character
Wife
Time
" I love people that work with passion and love. When you make choices that way, there's reverberations, consequences. That's what I'm interested in, that echo, that ripple of choice. "
Derek Cianfrance
People
Passion
Love
" I'm not the greatest reader. I feel like I have a bit of dyslexia or something, and that's probably why I became a filmmaker. I have the need to communicate, the need to tell stories; and the need to understand stories led me to movies. "
Derek Cianfrance
Why
Feel
Me
" I've always thought that guns are a cowardly tool in the hands of men and women trying to solve problems with each other. And cowardly in the hands of filmmakers. It's taken so lightly in films. "
Derek Cianfrance
Hands
Women
Thought
" 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
Start
Easy
Time
" 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
Know
Kind
Find
" 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
World
Want
See
" In terms of Ray Liotta, when I was a teenager growing up in Colorado, I didn't have pictures of girls on my wall. I had pictures of Ray Liotta on my wall. Along with Mike Patton, he was one of my heroes. "
Derek Cianfrance
Growing Up
Pictures
Heroes
" There was a time in my early 20s when I would leave a movie theater and just feel so alone and lonely afterwards. I just felt like my life was nothing like those characters up on the screen, so perfect all the time. Why didn't I talk like that? Why don't I look like that? "
Derek Cianfrance
Alone
My Life
Time
" 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
Opinions
Today
People
" I grew up Catholic, so I feel guilty about everything. "
Derek Cianfrance
Feel
Catholic
Guilty