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" There's something about the lack of certainty with a documentary, which is exhausting if you do three in a row. It's nerve-wracking. "

Kevin Macdonald

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" In war films, even more than in other kinds of documentary, we've come to think that shaky, poor-quality footage is somehow more authentic than something classically 'well shot.' "

Kevin Macdonald

" For everybody in the world, the answers to the mysteries in your life usually lie in your childhood, your upbringing, and your parents. "

Kevin Macdonald

" No man, no woman is without their flaws. "

Kevin Macdonald

" With fiction, I've grown to really love the challenge of lying, the challenge of telling a good tale that isn't truthful, and working with performers is endlessly fascinating. You know, learning what a good performance is, how to get a good performance, how much or how little you need to create emotion or to create character. "

Kevin Macdonald

" What got me into making movies was that I wanted to be a journalist. "

Kevin Macdonald

" People who die in an untimely way who are artists, somehow that validates their art, we feel. Why culturally we feel that, I don't know. "

Kevin Macdonald

" I used the same designer and costume designer on 'The Eagle' and 'The Last King of Scotland.' "

Kevin Macdonald

" I can't claim my grandfather's work has influenced mine directly, but his life certainly inspired me to follow this path. "

Kevin Macdonald

" If you go to pretty much everywhere in the developing world, you will find Bob Marley murals, and you'll find people playing his music. "

Kevin Macdonald

" In some ways, making documentaries is like being a journalist. You interview people and then use the bits you want to use as opposed to the bits they want you to use. "

Kevin Macdonald

" I've fallen out very badly with some of the subjects I've interviewed, because they see their lives a certain way; to step into a cinema and see your life depicted in another way can come as a terrible shock. "

Kevin Macdonald

" It's interesting to me that the Arab Spring started in Tunisia, and in the marches, people were singing 'Get up, stand up, stand up for your rights.' "

Kevin Macdonald

" The thing with newspapers is that they are a filter. We're relying on the editors of that paper to be a filter and to tell you that this is worth reading about, this is quality, and this is quite reliable. "

Kevin Macdonald

" The tradition has always been that in Roman films, the Romans are always British, and it's usually posh British: Laurence Olivier and his ilk. My take on all this was that it's a metaphor for empire and the end of empire. "

Kevin Macdonald

" I don't think of myself particularly as a Scottish director, but you are what you are because the first ten years of your life, and where you spend them, brand you. In that sense, I'll always be a Scottish director. "

Kevin Macdonald

" People think that the Italians invented neorealism, but actually, Humphrey Jennings did. He was revolutionary in using non-professional actors in his films, and he got extraordinary performances out of them. "

Kevin Macdonald

" When you're an outsider and going into a culture like America, it's easier to stay away from any cliches because you're not really aware of what they are. "

Kevin Macdonald

" I find it really difficult when you make a movie where it is set in Russia and everyone speaks in English. It drives me crazy. "

Kevin Macdonald

" When you look at almost every submarine movie, to some degree or another, there's this 'Moby Dick' element, this Ahab element to them. "

Kevin Macdonald

" I think the parallels of a giant power with overwhelming military superiority and might, with America and Rome, it seems obvious to me. "

Kevin Macdonald

" The things that are hardest to shoot are the things where you want people just to feel very natural, and you want to do love scenes, and you want to do just kids hanging out and trying to get them to relax. "

Kevin Macdonald

" I think there's always been interest in Bob Marley. "

Kevin Macdonald

" The amazing thing about Bob Marley is that there is no moving footage of him at all for the first ten or eleven years of his career. From 1962 to 1973, there's nothing, not a single frame. "

Kevin Macdonald

" The Internet has meant that advertising has migrated; there are hardly any classifieds in newspapers any more because they're all online. If people have a car to sell, for example, they sell it online; they don't go to the newspaper. "

Kevin Macdonald

" I'm not doing any more music films! "

Kevin Macdonald

" If you can understand, you can feel compassion. "

Kevin Macdonald

" I was fascinated by making a submarine movie, inspired by the Kursk disaster. This idea of being trapped down at the bottom of the sea seemed so terrifying. I was very interested in making a sub film which wasn't a military film. You think, Well, why are they there, then, if they're not in the military? Oh, well, they must be looking for treasure. "

Kevin Macdonald

" Documentary makers use other people's lives as their raw material, and that is morally indefensible. "

Kevin Macdonald

" Although 'The Anderson Platoon' was what we would now call an 'embedded film' - with all the ambiguities that term implies - somehow Schoendoerffer got away with showing things as they really were from a grunt's perspective. "

Kevin Macdonald

" In my early career as a documentarian, I suppose I was trying to make films which - where it was all about making a big cinematic statement, and I think with 'Marley,' I slightly changed my direction and adopted a more mellow approach. "

Kevin Macdonald