This applies to many film jobs, not just editing: half the job is doing the job, and the other half is finding ways to get along with people and tuning yourself in to the delicacy of the situation.
I feel like I had to learn how to take care of myself and find out what made me happy aside from just making films.
Gradually the live TV scene simmered out, replaced by film, and that took place in L.A. So many actors left New York.
One of the most interesting aspects of the film project was collaborating with so many people - directors, filmmakers, and writers - over a five-year period. I learned that there are two components to this.
If you're having fun being yourself and filming something that you would watch yourself, it becomes contagious for other people to watch, too.
Wanting to be in a Western film won't get me very far. Unless the opportunity arose, it doesn't matter how much I want to be in one. But if an opportunity did arise, no actor would pass it up.
Zhang Yimou is always going to need young, pretty girls for his films. But I don't really concern myself with what Zhang Yimou's next starlet looks like.
With stand-up, I can have an idea, go down the street to a comedy club and work on it, flesh it out, book a venue, people will come, then film it. I do all that myself; I never have to answer to anybody.
I want to write more books, see my first novel made into a film, fight more campaigns, work in more countries. I want to be able to recall experiences that have endured for their pleasure and range and intensity.
I'm a big fan of being able to hold those long shots and use space. I don't know, I think everything's so quick cut these days, as if films are too afraid that the audience is going to get bored instead of relaxing and trusting their work.
I'd like to believe that the people that have supported me in my work or identified with me in films, the people that feel they know me, they do and they don't have misconceptions - they understand. I believe that.
When I talk to some of the younger filmmakers, they are so worried about their films that, eventually, this state of being worried reflects itself in and helps the final work. Whereas, with projects that are meticulously planned, you look at the end ...
A film set is really delicate and people treat you very very well if you're an actor because they want you to be as comfortable as possible for you to do your work, but it really is just one in a team of many and usually 150 people.
So how critics will perceive your film or your work, or whether your movie is going to make $100 million at the box office, or whether you are going to be winning any awards - well, you have no control over that.
I don't know what it is, exactly, but there's a negative drag on film sets after the second week or so, a mutinous vibe because the infinite capacities of the directors and everybody else become quite finite and everybody's under the gun and it becom...
I turned down plenty of films which proved to be hugely successful. And, of course, I've also had plenty of experiences where everyone thought we were doing brilliant work and it ended up pretty horrific. Same as any actor, really.
Once you're directing, you're kind of in a certain mode, where you're taking whatever is on the page and forming it into the film that you think it might want to be. So whether it's my writing or not, I still try to work with it in the same way.
All actors do that. Should do that and do that. For the most part. I say all actors. I'm exaggerating, but you know who does and who doesn't. Vince is a wonderful young actor who knows his work and did a beautiful job on this film.
Theatre is relatively easy if you're British - you're living in the theatre capital of the world, London - there are so many places you can work, still. If I had begun to think of myself as a film actor, I think I would have got distracted.
All of a sudden, those few pages of script that he had shown me with the weird images I could visualize all of that in my brain, and I knew that there was this mad little genius at work here and I really wanted to do the film.
It's a real gift to work with my sister. We obviously have such a shorthand communicating with each other that it makes the process easier. And from growing up together and watching so many films together, we ended up with pretty similar taste.
