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" Modern-day cinema takes the form of a sermon. You don't get to think, you only get to receive information. "
Gus Van Sant
Only
Think
You
Related Quotes:
" My art teacher in junior high was a very out gay man and a mentor to me. He would tell us about Greenwich Village and show us the 'Village Voice' and describe his life, but it was all sort of subversive and below the radar. "
Gus Van Sant
Art
Man
Life
" 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. "
Gus Van Sant
Independent
True
American
" 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
Up
Story
" 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. "
Gus Van Sant
Think
Way
Story
" 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. "
Gus Van Sant
Advertising
Dark
Comedy
" 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. "
Gus Van Sant
Know
Art
Look
" Well, I want to do everything in sort of a documentary style, ever since I started in the '80s. "
Gus Van Sant
Started
Everything
Style
" The rules of suspense are that you do know, and you just don't know when. In the Hitchcock rules of suspense, you are supposed to know that there is a bomb on the bus that might blow up, and then it becomes very tense - but if you don't know that there's a bomb and it just blows up, then it's just a surprise. "
Gus Van Sant
Rules
You
Know
" When you get to be 23, 24 or 25, you start to freeze up and become an adult. "
Gus Van Sant
Up
Adult
You
" I think that in some cases, I've made films that have a sentimental quality, at least as part of the film. "
Gus Van Sant
Sentimental
Think
Some
" With 'Good Will Hunting,' Miramax made certain the recruited audience wasn't expecting to laugh at Robin Williams like they normally do. From my limited experience, you can really blow test screenings by conducting them in the wrong way. "
Gus Van Sant
You
Test
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
Like
Why
Think
" 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. "
Gus Van Sant
Life
Space
Teen
" I have my ideas of what a good documentary is, but drama is a different animal because you're arranging everything. "
Gus Van Sant
You
Because
Drama
" You're following your track, the story, your only plan, your map for the audience, and all the other stuff is, like, the fun stuff: the costumes, the locations, the set-dressing and the actors. They can all be variable as you like if you stick - however roughly - to the path. "
Gus Van Sant
Story
You
Fun
" I don't usually direct actors in the classic sense of that word. Instead, I try to remind the characters before the shoot what's going on in a very simple way. I then watch them, their inventions as actors, approving or not approving what they're doing. "
Gus Van Sant
Classic
Doing
Simple
" 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
Because
Try
Started
" 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. "
Gus Van Sant
Character
School
Stop
" 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. "
Gus Van Sant
Looking
Losing
Story
" 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. "
Gus Van Sant
World
Research
Elephant
" 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
Accept
Die
" 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. "
Gus Van Sant
Adolescence
Gay
Home
" For all the boredom the straight life brings, it's not too bad. "
Gus Van Sant
Life
Boredom
Bad
" When I grew up in the '60s, we were actually dominated by this, you know, sort of conforming '50s culture, even though we were like trying to express our own culture, like, the dominant culture was the thing that was forming us. And I think that that's true today. "
Gus Van Sant
You
Culture
Know
" Usually people just hire me. "
Gus Van Sant
People
Just
Hire
" 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. "
Gus Van Sant
Drama
Rules
Journalism
" I'm normally drawn to something I haven't done and seen before. "
Gus Van Sant
Drawn
Something
Seen
" I had wanted to do a comedy. "
Gus Van Sant
Had
Wanted
Comedy
" 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. "
Gus Van Sant
California
Weird
Valley
" Yeah, Kubrick's a big influence. In something like 'A Clockwork Orange,' he is trying to use the practical light - I mean, at least he says that in his interviews, like they're not using traditionally Hollywood lights. In 'Elephant' we basically used no lights; we never really adjusted. "
Gus Van Sant
Trying
Elephant
Influence