I did direct two short movies. I learned many things, and one of the things I learned was that I am not a director. It has to be visceral, and it's not for me. I feel much more comfortable acting.
I'm certainly curious about people. As a kid, I moved around a lot. I was raised in a lot of different places, and thanks to working in the movies, I've gotten to keep traveling. I've always been interested in other cultures and languages.
Looking at acting, in the movies or the theater, and the way I like to look at it, it's just an extension of childhood play... Kids play and imagine in a very intense fashion and they don't need any director telling them, 'You really have to believe ...
I'm quite comfortable looking at myself in movies, probably because I've been doing it for so long, since I was a kid. So I sort of watched myself grow up and go through adolescence, like, basically on camera.
Charlie Prince: [to the townsfolk firing at both fugitives] Not the black hat! The rancher, you dumb shits! The rancher!
Charlie Kaufman: How could you have somebody held prisoner in a basement and... and working at a police station at the same time? Donald Kaufman: [pause] Trick photography.
Charlie Allnut: Well I ain't sorry for you no more, ya crazy, psalm-singing, skinny old maid!
Charlie Allnut: Nobody in Africa, but yours truly, can get a good head of steam on the old African Queen.
Charlie: Yeah... Ladies do ask for attention. In my experience, they pretend to give it, but it's generally a smokescreen for demanding it back with interest.
I view every film as a commitment to undertake a long journey. I suppose this has to do with my need to leave no stone unturned, and sometimes to even dig deeper into the mine.
So on my screenplay, on the left-hand side of the page, I will put all the ideas that refer to the scene next to it so I have some sort of pictorial reference.
When I was a kid, my dream was to be a farmer and marry Charlie Brown. I wanted to rescue him and make him happy. Besides, he was always lusting after the little redhead girl.
Parenting girls makes you quite gender-conscious - it's almost impossible to fight the power of pink. It's not such a terrible thing to want to be a princess when you're five, but it would be nice if there were some other options.
An opera singer is like an athlete before a match. An athlete cannot overdo anything. In order to perform at the highest possible level, you need to refrain from activities so as to be able to express this power.
Any film I've made, I've only really begun to understand in the cutting room. That's when the story shows itself to you, like a wreck coming out of the sea.
In my 20s I was going round seeing agents who were patronising because I was fat and a girl, which was a double whammy. I knew what it was to feel out-of-the-loop.
I have stayed true to that first idea that people can have a day in their lives that is very important and if they can reconnect with that day, reconnect with the people they were then, they can suddenly revive their emotions.
I had 500 kids at camp this past summer for example. We do nine weeks for kids and nine days for grown ups every summer. The adult camp is a lot of fun.
It had an enormous impact to the point of the United Nations passing a resolution against the killing and hunting of these whales as they are an endangered species. This was a documentary on the plight of the whales.
Well, this week for example, I was just in Los Angeles making a documentary for German television on whales. They had tried to get me in England where they missed me.
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.
