I believe that independent film making is the last frontier of creative expression available. So I'm always willing to lend a helping hand to a young film maker who's just getting into the business.
I took a film course in grade ten that made me want to direct, and I've always been making short films and home videos with my friends, so it's definitely something I wanna pursue as well.
I went to the University of Toronto to study the history and theory of film, in the back of my mind thinking I'd go to NYU film school and see if I could make a career of it.
The profession of film director can and should be such a high and precious one; that no man aspiring to it can disregard any knowledge that will make him a better film director or human being.
It's gotten out of control. It's taking bigger and bigger names to make smaller and smaller films. I worry that important films without a big name attached won't get made at all.
'W.' is not necessarily a political film, but it was sort of a contrasting reality for me to get into George W. Bush as a character because of how I felt about his administration before I started making the film.
When you make documentaries or short films, you have to have eyes and ears in the back of your head and on the sides and all around you. I like that in my films.
I like making black and white films in natural surroundings, but I much prefer shooting a color film inside a studio where the colors are easier to control.
I will always continue to make stupid action films but I think 'V For Vendetta' is a very smart film and I think that people will feel differently about things when they see it.
With 'Toy Story,' which is a fantastic film but is essentially animation, you get to make all your decisions beforehand. 'Jumanji' is shot much like any other action film.
No film has captivated my imagination more than 'King Kong.' I'm making movies today because I saw this film when I was 9 years old.
I guess why the Ocean's films are hard for me is because on the one hand you have to make sure the performances are there, but on the other hand it's a film that demands, to my mind, a very layered and complex visual scheme. That takes a lot of time ...
I don't see me doing $100 million films because $100 million films, the very nature of them, you need to offend as few people as possible just to make your money back.
The whole thing about making films in an organic film on location is that it's not all about characters, relationships and themes, it's also about place and the poetry of place. It's about the spirit of what you find, the accidents of what you stumbl...
Marketing has supplanted story as the primary force behind the worthiness of making a film, and that's a very sad thing. It's film only as a function of consumerism rather than as an important component of our culture, and that's everywhere around th...
We've turned down multi million dollar films, simply because we liked the film better. We have the luxury to do so - we have projects that make the money, and others that we do for love.
'Biutiful' is a tough film. It doesn't make concessions to the vulgarity of light entertainment. It's not the kind of film that you see every day in the Cineplex. But as an artist, it's the thing that I needed to do.
As the years go by and I make more films, I am increasingly interested in capturing place as a vivid backdrop for my films.
Coming out of the '60s and the Vietnam War in America, it was commonplace for people to make films that had relevance to them. And since the '70s, cinema has gone almost entirely in the direction of spectacle and escapism and superhero films.
I don't think there is really a favorite, I'm very fond of film making as a whole and as a medium and of course, there are some that I've enjoyed making more than others but I've enjoyed making all of them.
The most difficult part of making movies is to keep making them. Maybe, you could make the biggest hit in the world, but then the big problem is what to do next and how to maintain devoted to a certain instinct that I have about films.
