Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I love 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind.'
It's not a character flaw to become an adult.
I like to let the actors work the way they want to.
I was nearly a teen-ager before I stopped assuming that everyone I met was Jewish.
'You Can Count On Me' took 20 days to shoot, and we had 50 days to shoot 'Margaret.'
Truthfully, and I don't mean to sound naive, but I don't know that much about the film business.
I personally don't need to see a story about a person that starts up miserable and ends up worse.
I love accents, I love listening to people talk, I like to try to emulate it as accurately as I can.
I grew up going to the movies, not watching them on television, so I'm still a bit resistant to TV as a medium.
My personal pride is not strong enough to make me brave. But I don't know why I equate being brave with fighting.
I take it as a sign of intimacy and friendship when you feel comfortable enough with someone to have a little rough and tumble.
Sometimes films have no rehearsals - you don't have real rehearsals on the set because the day is so dominated by the schedule.
There are so many details in a movie that it's amazing how much work you'll do to change what adds up to not that much material.
I actually think storyboards are great. I don't draw well enough to do them myself. I've only used storyboards a couple of times.
You can shoot a film in New York without seeing the Empire State Building. Or Starbucks...although the latter is much less realistic.
You can shoot a film in New York without seeing the Empire State Building. Or Starbucks... although the latter is much less realistic.
I do a lot of improvising when I'm writing, and I work very hard on the scripts... they are written very much in an actor-friendly way.
I'm always really interested in different environments and how they affect people's lives and what it would be like to live somewhere else.
There's a few people who I've accumulated over the years who I really trust to show a first cut to and to be helpful rather than unhelpful.
I've reached a new level of closeness with a new friend when I can make a joke at their expense. That's one of the great joys of life for me.
I feel like if you can describe something fully and accurately, then people will be able to see it themselves - they don't need be told what to.
I still haven't quite caught on to the idea of writing without dialogue. I like writing dialogue, and there's nothing wrong with dialogue in movies.
I've done a lot of assignment work in my life, and the only way you can do it is to make it your own as quickly as possible, and then you give it back.
There are some situations in life that are simply not funny, and there's nothing funny about them, but they're rare, and they don't last all that long.
There's a lot of pressure on a film set that's more immediate than the pressure in the theater where you're nervous about what's going to happen next week.
I often find myself writing about people taking care of each other, or trying to. And often seem to write about situations that are too big for the characters.
To me, 'director's cut' means that what was released before was somebody else's cut. That, to me, always implies that what was released wasn't what the director wanted.
The world is really heading in a very dangerous direction, it becomes that much more valuable and important to go to the movies and see human beings that are human beings.
I know there are some actors who won't switch their accents off when they're on set and like to be called by their character's names. That works for them, and that's great.
A really good comedy, I think, is played as if it was real, and it's the circumstances that make it amusing. And I think that the - the inverse or the reverse is true for drama.
'Margaret' as a creative entity is something that I'm very happy and proud of. But 'Margaret' as a professional experience was a nightmare until it was rescued by critics and people who liked it.
There are a lot of elements when you're writing, or when I'm writing, that are sitting in the back of your mind. I try to let them stay there, because they find their way in more naturally that way.
When I walk onto a film set, I become frightened and nervous. There's all this equipment, all these people, and most of them do things you don't know how to do. I didn't come from a film background.
There's something about the impact of a big screen that means something to me, even though I realize almost every film is fated to be seen for a year in theaters, and then forever after on television.
When you have people like Casey [Affleck] and Michelle Williams and they want to do more takes you don't say, "Sorry, that's it." And I also don't like to say, "It's fine, it's great." Unless it's clearly there.
I think the more dangerous and dire the political circumstances seem, the more you attach value to anything that shows you why a human being is a human being or human experience or view of the world in that way.
If you're going to make a statement, I think you should write it in prose and make a statement. If you have characters who are mouthpieces for a point of view, then you have to be very clever about disguising it.
I'm always struck when I go somewhere I've never been before, especially if it's in my home town, by just how different the atmosphere can be, and how disorienting it can be - especially if there's any kind of trouble.
I remember the kind of teenager I was, the kind of teenager I wanted to be, and then the kind of teenagers that were all around me. Life is lived on such a big scale in those years - and such an embarrassing one as well.
I remember yelling at my mother one time, horribly. I was in tenth grade or something like that, and I hadn't done something, and she misunderstood because my stepfather told her something that was wrong that I hadn't done.
Filmmaking, like any other art, is a very profound means of human communication; beyond the professional pleasure of succeeding or the pain of failing, you do want your film to be seen, to communicate itself to other people.
[With theater] you draw the audience into the room as best you can, and in film, you can draw them into the room, you can draw them outside into the desert, you can take them out into the ocean, you can do all these amazing things.
I actually think storyboards are great. I don't draw well enough to do them myself. I've only used storyboards a couple of times. We used two storyboards in 'Margaret': one for the bus accident and for the opera sequence at the end.
I wrote a play once called 'Lobby Hero,' which I thought turned out very well, but there's no final version of it. I published the one we produced, but there are seven other versions with different variations sitting in my desk at home.
When you're a man, you're often in situations where you have to decide how far you're going to go in an argument. How big is the other guy? All this stuff that girls don't have to worry about as much, because that's not part of the equation.
Adolescents show off. That's another way of wanting to connect with people. It's not an aspect of human behavior that we generally consider to be very admirable, but it is, in some way, a means of connecting with someone else and not being alone.
The really funny comedies to me are always the ones that are played the straightest or given the most emotional content. And when people start making faces and setting things up and commenting and winking at you, I don't find that to be very funny.
The creative process on 'Margaret' was incredibly satisfying. I loved the cast; I had a great time writing the script. I liked making the movie. Believe it or not, I actually like editing the movie. It was all the rest of it that was such a nightmare.
Actors are very demanding because they have nowhere to hide. If I write a scene, it doesn't turn out very well, I don't ever have to show it to anyone; when you turn the camera on, or when you walk on stage, they have to feel like what's happening is real.
Little kids grow up discovering the world that's shown to them and then when you become a teenager, it kind of shrinks a little bit. I think when you get past that point, one of the important things is that you see there is more to the world than yourself.