Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I love that about filmmaking - seeing final product and getting to see everyone else that you don't necessarily engage with on set every day and getting them to showcase their talents. Whether it's effects, music, the edit, the rhythm of a film is driven by that, so it's cool to see it come together. It's great to be standing in front of something you're genuinely proud of.
My only talent is that I have a so-called big engine. I can attack on successive days - well maybe now not so often - or ride tempo at the front of the peloton for a week. I'm not a climber or a sprinter. Whatever makes the race sticky, fast and difficult is good for me. I'm just a big motor - I think I'm allowed to say that - and a fighter. I'll do whatever it takes to make the race.
We just assume all the great actors are in New York first and then L.A. second, and it's so not true. There's such amazing talent everywhere. It's exciting that now that there are these sort of new Hollywoods or new filmmaking communities that really benefit from these great faces and character actors and leading actors that just are fresh and exciting and bring an authenticity to the piece.
You want to take yourself seriously, and you want to make something that you hope will have resonance with the audience. You want to bring your perspective and what you consider your talent to that piece of work, and you move forward in that direction. Sometimes that's easy, and sometimes it's met with resistance because you're dealing with situations where, for everybody else, it's a piece of business.
I had never really heard of Meryl Streep before. Someone told me she was an actress and she'd been in a few things, but I said, you know, whatever. She showed up and she seemed somewhat inexperienced, so I gave her a few pointers, and I think she has a decent career ahead of her. It's always hard to tell these things in Hollywood, but I do think that she has some talent under there. I think she's a diamond in the rough.
If you have talent, I believe that talent will win out. In other words, if you're a good broadcaster, if you're a funny comic, you'll be heard. If you know how to do a broadcast, if you're a good newsman, if you can see an event and describe it, you're going to be heard and you're going to be seen. So there's always room. Now with cable and satellite and Internet, it's endless. You could blog, you could be your own talent.
I can ask someone to let me into all aspects of their life for several years, but people have got to have that gift: that courage and that talent for opening their lives to the camera. Being candid is a gift, and that's what the audience responds to. Part of it is me asking, and part of it is just their inherent talent, which is what you are looking for when you make documentaries - people that are really going to let you in on what they are going through.
If you don't want to join a union, you're gonna have much more opportunity for individual expansion, individual expression of talent and achievement. But when you go to work at a place where salaries are predetermined not by your productivity and not by your talent and not by how much you work, but rather by what the union contract is, you're locked into that no matter how good a job you do. The only option you have is overtime to make more than what standard pay is.
