I was a really bad teenager and I got my tongue pierced. I don't even remember where I did it, but it was under very surreptitious circumstances.
I wanted to be a director and producer and writer, but in the early '40's the union wouldn't let you get through the gates. You couldn't get on a crew, or even learn to direct.
I can't go back and label myself as an outcast because I was a pretty well-adjusted kid, but I can certainly relate to the feeling of being an outsider.
To see my wife getting inspired from my notes and thoughts, going in the direction I wanted, and have her surprise me with wonderful choices was a real treat.
I think that Canadians have an incredible reverence for authority and regard for authority, and I think one of the healthy ways that it's challenged is through questioning it, through the polite hostility of comedy.
I didn't feel like going any further in this scene with the boy. He was not a professional actor, and if I had pushed the scene any further it would have destroyed the tone of the movie.
Nobody wants to fall into a safety net, because it means the structure in which they've been living is in a state of collapse and they have no choice but to tumble downwards. However, it beats the alternative.
Grinning is something you do when you are entertained in some way, such as reading a good book or watching someone you don't care for spill orange soda all over themselves.
Actors need bricks to play with, and in fact we rejected all the improvised fragments we had made without a plan. Improvisation without a plan is like tennis without tennis balls.
No Statue of Liberty ever greeted our arrival in this country...we did not, in fact, come to the United States at all. The United States came to us.
It's still the same job, the same anxieties, but it did feel a lot different, that kind of budget, that schedule, and frankly, the slowness of it all, and also having a lot of other units working.
You never want your second act or the whole movie to just be this relentless march towards its goal. You want things to take the audience by surprise.
I have no regret about making 'Heroine'; rather, I am happy I made it. I never shun my films; I stick to it.
My entire career stands on the strong pillars of women-oriented films. This stems from the fact that I am sensitive to the entire aura and mystique of a woman and womanhood.
As I started to develop as a director, I wanted to do projects that were inherently more cinematic, where the freight was not so much in the dialogue, where it would be carried more by the camera.
The hardest thing about writing a script is you finish it, but it doesn't mean anything. It's not like a novel or short story - a script is meant to be made into a movie.
You just write what you know, and I know what it's like to be a teenager in 1993,, and I'm a woman, so I'm definitely going to write from that point of view.
The one thing I'm proud of as a filmmaker is that people are entitled not to like my films - that's the privilege of the public - but I think I have my own imprint.
Give a lift to a tomato, you expect her to be nice, don't ya? After all, what kind of dames thumb rides, Sunday school teachers?
That's what the internet is: it's like bombarding your eyeballs with these myriad blinking colour lights. It's like trying to watch a movie on your phone in the middle of Times Square.
In my opinion, it's more interesting to see magic happening in a world that feels grounded. If the world is already crazy, then anything can happen. So it's better to start with something real.
