Bret Easton Ellis is a social satirist; I consider myself aligned with how he does things. Bret doesn't write about that which he loves about the world, he writes about what disgusts him. You'd be a disturbed individual if you came out and said, 'I l...
I love test screenings. Some directors don't, I know. But I love it. I think it's because I come from the theatre and in the theatre, previews are where you really have to listen to the audience and really feel how they're responding. I found our tes...
I absolutely love television, and I don't mean to be vulgar, but as I keep having to explain to people from the movie industry, I get more power and more money doing television, so why on earth would I do a film?
On Memorial Day, I don't want to only remember the combatants. There were also those who came out of the trenches as writers and poets, who started preaching peace, men and women who have made this world a kinder place to live.
My earliest memory is seeing Michael Jackson in Melbourne with my sister when I was about ten. I still have this souvenir stick with a glove that would light up and make a peace sign in a bunch of different colors. I'm so happy my mom didn't throw th...
Listen, I think movies serve many different purposes, from those movies that are frivolous and just an entertainment, to movies that just go to exploring the complexities of the human soul. Everything is valid if it's done with honesty and dignity, a...
When I was little I used to dance and model and that was fun. But I was always the person that was goofing off and I would memorize every line in every movie that I saw. And at recess that's what I would do, I would talk to my friends and recite movi...
I haven't worked enough to worry about getting typecast, but I do as a film lover didn't want to be working with the bad guys. I didn't want to be making a movie I thought was contributing to a lower base of movies that I just didn't think were helpi...
There are so many of these young-adult movies with these cold guys who act like jerks to girls but are hiding soft sentiments. But in the real world most guys who act like jerks are jerks. Generally they are. I spent a lot of high school thinking tha...
Hollywood is a roulette wheel. Each project dictates what's going to happen for you next, and it doesn't really matter that your project is critically acclaimed or won awards or has fans worldwide. It's a matter of how many movie tickets and DVDs and...
Critics can say what they like about the films, but very often, there's a certain expectation of documentaries that they're supposed to be like PowerPoint presentations. I see documentaries as movies. So when I see some critics writing that we could ...
My movies just kind of sneak up on you. I don't have to worry too much about what everybody is going to say. Anyway, I really don't pay attention to what the world says about my movies. I just care about what my buddies think.
A friend of mine from New York asked me what I want to do, and I responded with, 'I want to make movies.' He responded with, 'Guess what? They're not making movies on Martha's Vineyard.' Literally ten minutes later, I was packing my bags.
I had done a bunch of stuff before I even went to Disney. I'm so grateful for what Disney gave me and the experiences that I got, but at the end of the day, I can do so much more than what I did on that channel and in those movies.
I have a lot of influences. I like to sit down with the cinematographer a month before, and we'll watch pieces of 20 or 30 movies. You're basically the sum of all the experiences you've ever had, and they're sort of shaken up in you and reproduced in...
In films, you are a commodity. You are a look, something that the camera really likes, something that has struck an audience in a certain way. It's not really so much about transforming yourself the way actors do onstage. I think there's a difference...
No, 'F/X 2' was a job. I enjoyed doing it but that was definitely a job. I wrote that, I didn't direct it but 'Candyman' and the earlier horror movies I made, I was completely into horror and suspense and always have been. It's informed everything I'...
I like flawed characters very much. A lot of times I get asked to do parts that are kind of small but key - three-scene roles that are three kick-ass scenes. Growing up, watching as many movies as I did, I was always into character actors like that.
I grew up on certain movies, particular movies that said something to me as a kid from Missouri, movies that showed me places I'd yet traveled, or different cultures, or explained something, or said something in a better way than I could ever say. I ...
My grandmother and I would go see movies, and we'd come back to the apartment - we had a one-room apartment in Hollywood - and I would kind of lock myself in this little dressing room area with a cracked mirror on the door and act out what I had just...
I never really thought about myself being in really big movies at all. In fact, I always though I'd do, I don't know, smaller movies is not quite the right word, but more character-oriented, dramatic things. I took myself a little bit seriously.
