One of my problems with a lot of things I watch is that everybody's too pretty, and it takes me out of the film because I'm thinking that all these people look like I've seen them in a cafe in Los Angeles.
You need the actors to feel as much ownership of the performance and the direction of the story as you do to get the most out of everyone's potential. Part of it is just making sure we all have the same vision.
To spend one's life being angry, and in the process doing nothing to change it, is to me ridiculous. I could be mad all day long, but if I'm not doing a damn thing, what difference does it make?
But you know you haven't done it all because you know everything keeps evolving and changing; and you know you can evolve with it if you grow and develop as a human being.
I couldn't be happier teaming up to make the feature with a company as innovative as VICE. There is so much the world doesn't know about piracy in Somalia and the people involved, and I'm excited to be telling a story of piracy in Somalia from a diff...
The author O. Henry taught me about the value of the unexpected. He once wrote about the noise of flowers and the smell of birds - the birds were chickens and the flowers dried sunflowers rattling against a wall.
If you make a fool of yourself in front of a cat, he will sneer at you, if you are sober; he will leave the room if you are drunk. If you make a fool of yourself in front a dog, he will make a fool of himself, too.
I think literature can make familiar the unfamiliar, and the unfamiliar is very much about the dispossessed, and so the value of literature seems to me to go into the stories that not everybody wants to tell.
I was a little bit perturbed by the whole big grief machine that grew out of 9/11. I knew that I wanted to write about it, but I wasn't sure about how to go about it.
I mean, every novel's a historical novel anyway. But calling something a historical novel seems to put mittens on it, right? It puts manners on it. And you don't want your novels to be mannered.
The short story is an imploding universe. It has all the boil of energy inside it. A novel has shrapnel going all over the place. You can have a mistake in a novel. A short story has to be perfect.
He entered the city asked a blind man if he had ever heard the name Enkidu, and the old man shrugged and shook his head, then turned away, as if to say, ‘It is impossible to keep the names of friends whom we have lost
You can't just keep recycling revivals. And you can't keep betting on the efforts of guys like me who've been around. You have to take the next step and bet on the next generation.
I really like reaching out and seeing the audience - they're potential audiences! And on occasion I can make them excited about going to the theater again, if they've ceased or gone less.
All these actors who died before I was born, all the theaters and the artistic movements - all that stuff fills you up and makes you feel like you're the inheritor of all this information and of all its passion.
What I particularly liked was that, coming from California and not being involved in the New York scene, I developed my personal way, in my own way, at my own pace.
When you watch the first 'American Pie' movie, you're like... 'I know that jock who's kind of sweet and has a girlfriend, and I know that weird off-beat kid.'
As a director, I'm not the one animating every frame, every shot. I'm moving around like a surgeon on rounds, or a farmer checking in on all the plants being grown, pruning and adjusting. For me, it's a very exciting job.
I think for us - the Weinstein name, the Miramax name - they've both become synonymous with brands. We have a real winning formula when it comes to championing a different kind of movie, and I think the audience trusts us.
Well, I always say the law was meant to be interpreted in a lenient manner. And that's what I try to do, is sometimes I lean to one side of it, sometimes I lean to the other.
I've always believed in populating my films with characters who we like, who we have some warmth for, who have warmth for each other, who we would like to hang out with, who we emulate in one way or another.
