I think most of my films all have a certain tone or intensity in them. They are tense, and you kind of anticipate some kind of catastrophe, but you're not quite sure.
There's tremendous shame with being bullied. I think there's a level at which you think that there's a reason that you're being singled out, that you're being chosen.
I couldn't open up a magazine, you couldn't read a newspaper, you couldn't turn on the TV without hearing about the obesity epidemic in America.
I think, after about a week in, I started to get really down. I would feel better when I would eat.
Kids can and will thrive in the right conditions, but it all seems to start with the teachers, and giving those teachers the resources to teach- and not just to test.
By just living one’s life, sadness accumulates here and there, be it in the blankets hung out in the sun to dry, the toothbrushes in the bathroom, and the phone history logs.
Identity is part of drama to me. Who am I, why am I behaving this way, and am I aware of it?
If you do a story about a British journalist rescuing a child from Sarajevo, then Sarajevo just becomes an exotic location, and the story's about this British journalist.
I think that, if there are topics that are just on people's minds, things manifest into reality out of the sort of global consciousness of being aware of those topics.
I think that 'Elysium' the movie is unrealistic, with the space station and everything. I think 'Elysium' the metaphor is completely realistic: it's exactly where we're going.
If there isn't a deep core reason for a film existing, what is the point? For me to be known as a filmmaker that makes films that have a point, I'm stoked.
I think the world of 'District 9' has a lot of race and oppression-based ideas that I would still like to explore in that world.
Wes Anderson grew up in Houston, and he and I talk about Manhattan in similar ways, as a kind of fantasy world.
When I start a movie, there will be certain films that I watch again just because the vibe seems right.
When you find yourself on the Internet when you're supposed to be writing, you've already lost. It's even beyond procrastination when you end up on the Internet.
'Frances Ha' is the closest final product to what I had in my head of any movie I've made. I'm not entirely even sure why that is.
We expect forty-year-olds to have grown up at some point, and to be engaged and adult and take responsibility, and doing nothing would seem to go against that.
You set up a story and it turns inside out and that is, for me, the most exciting sort of story to write. The viewer thinks it's going to be about something and it does the opposite.
I think Christine and Chad are on the opposite extremes of the spectrum. Christine is a model victim, and Chad is a model perpetrator, and Howard is closer to the middle.
I think the more the actor lets you know what he thinks of the character, the less the audience cares - like a comedian who laughs at his own jokes.
You make a film to distract people, to interest them, perhaps to make them think, perhaps to help them be a little less naive, a little better than they were.
