A film's success or failure is strictly on the director's shoulders.
I don't know what I'm qualified to do, film-wise... So it's really down to a director or a casting director to find something that they think I could do.
Agnes Varda changed my view of cinema; she directs from an artistic point of view, and a film is most of all the expression of an artistic director. I learnt to enter the world and the imagination of a director.
In the old days, before there was such a thing as film schools, directors learned the camera by watching other directors, and learning from their own dailies, and listening to the cameraman, and seeing what would work. Some of those guys could cut th...
There was an interesting article in Los Angeles Magazine about women directors. A woman director makes one bad independent film and her career is over. Guys tend to get an opportunity to learn from their mistakes.
The thing is, as a film director, you're essentially alone: You have to tell a story primarily through pictures, and only you know the film you see in your head.
When you see the films of certain young directors, you get the impression that film history begins for them around 1980.
There was a time when I desperately wanted to be part of a Yash Chopra film, not because he was a great director, but because I was an outsider and I wanted that validation of being accepted in the film industry.
The thing that fascinates me is that the way I came to film and television is extinct. Then there were gatekeepers, it was prohibitively expensive to make a film, to be a director you had to be an entrepreneur to raise money.
Films are not mathematics - that's the first thing you need to understand. At least, that's how I feel. They are not words on paper. Films are made with people, with teams and with individual bundles of creativity coming together to fulfill the visio...
I'm very manipulative towards directors. My theory is that everyone on the set is directing the film, we're all receiving art messages from the universe on how we should do the film.
That's the greatest sin a director can commit; to make a film simply because he wants to make a film.
I love acting, every job is a dream job when you're an actor. I'd like to do eventually more film work and to collaborate with the best actors and directors in film.
Normally as a director, you do look at other films and things that are relevant. But with this film, it became impossible because I became so aware of the camera placement.
'Ashes of Time' was my third film, and as a young director at that point, it's not very often that you have the chance to make a big martial arts film, so of course I jumped at this opportunity.
My guess is that if they now choose to change of director for every other film, it's just because you can't really change the formula, you can merely try to film it your way.
After college, I funded my short films with acting roles in film and TV. I learned my craft through the great opportunities British television gave me as a director.
It's very difficult to break into motion pictures, but it's oddly easier for directors today because of independent films and cable, who have inherited for the most part those films of substance that the studios are reluctant to finance.
The director is planning on titling the film 'Yummy Fur' so we are probably planning on changing the title of the book to 'Yummy Fur' to match the film.
As you can probably tell, I like films and directors that bring a totally unique style to filming action.
They seem much rarer now, those auteur films that come out of a director's imagination and are elliptical and hermetic. All those films that got me into independent cinema when I was watching it seem thin on the ground.
