Top 45 Cary Fukunaga Quotes

So often at home in the West Village, I’m like, ‘Why aren’t I allowed a horse?’ I would keep a horse in a stable in my apartment, and I would fit him with rubber shoes, and we’d just roll him out. If I needed to go to a meeting somewhere, I’d just get on my horse and go across town.

Sundance took me on my first film and from there sort of launched my career.

I didn’t grow up watching detective shows. I’ve never even seen an episode of ‘CSI.’

The problem with being a writer/director: unless you’re really disciplined, you start adding projects, and you have to make time to make them. Because you have to write them… no one else is writing them for me.

It’s so easy for shows to be gritty and handheld and shaky and really tight in people’s faces.

I used to do Civil War re-enacting between the ages of 15 and 19. I was part of a unit that was considered very authentic. We would source the right wools, the right buttons for the costumes. We had the right look.

There are elements to the 19th century which just don’t work for contemporary audiences.

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.

I’m definitely sensitive to the idea of exploitation. You don’t want to glamorize certain things.

I do want to direct a movie from horseback one day.

Tom Hooper had done ‘John Adams,’ and David Lynch did ‘Twin Peaks.’ I figured I could do eight hours of television, and I wanted to.

‘Jane Eyre’ was one of those films that I was familiar with as a kid, and I always enjoyed the story.

I wrote my first script, which was 50 pages, at age 15. It was about two brothers in love with the same nurse while they’re convalescing in a Civil War hospital.

I don’t storyboard, and I don’t really shot list. I let the shots be determined by how the actors and I figure out the blocking in a scene, and then from there, we cover it.

I don’t really put trophies out. I don’t keep trophies around my apartment.

Every single substitute teacher growing up could not pronounce my name, so whenever someone pauses, I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s me.’

I want to have a nice country home one day, yeah.

My mom was married to a Mexican guy – a surfer – and so we’d kind of camp out on the beach the swell season.

On ‘Sin Nombre,’ Adriano Goldman and I improvised a lot of things on-site. We were working with untrained actors, and you can’t really block a scene in a traditional way.

It’s hard because there’s a part of me that wants ‘True Detective’ to win every award we’re nominated for. But I’m a huge fan of ‘Breaking Bad’ and ‘Game of Thrones.’

You work with the communities to make films. And you just don’t go in and take over their territory.

I have a really good relationship with Focus Features; we had a wonderful time working together on ‘Sin Nombre.’

Casting directors I don’t think are the best in Mexico at street casting. Whereas, I think, in New York and in L.A., that’s more common; not so in Mexico. So it’s up to you as a director in a lot of ways to go out and do that.

I’ve written immense love letters that are supposed to be opened over days at a time.

Literally, I don’t have a television. So I don’t really know what’s happening pop-culturally. I read the ‘New York Times.’ And there’s one worldwide cabin blog that I look at.

My dad worked for a generator company and then UC Berkeley, and my mom was as a dental hygienist and then eventually a history teacher. My uncles and aunts, all of them are elementary school teachers or scientists.

I wanted to make my sophomore film as different as possible. I didn’t want to be pigeonholed. I didn’t want to be identifiable.

‘Sin Nombre’ was almost like the adolescent version of ‘Jane Eyre.’ ‘Jane Eyre’ sort of picks up where ‘Sin Nombre’ ends. It’s about this girl who starts off on her own at her lowest point of despair, and she figures out how she got there.

I’d done the method bit before from, like, age 15 to 19. I was a Civil War re-enactor.

If you’re directing, it doesn’t really matter any more if it’s going straight to TV – what matters is whether you have the resources to make a story that moves you.

I think the only reason people use PCs is because they have to. Mac is the most streamlined computer there is. I started using the Mac in college because I was doing editing, and they were the only computers we could use to do that.

I have no idea what it would be like to be just one thing and speak one language. I feel enormously privileged to travel and be able to mingle and speak to people that, had I only known English, I wouldn’t have been able to meet.

Some directors don’t get involved in the cinematography and are just about story, but I’m definitely more tactile than that in terms of my involvement in the minutiae.

When you have a script, and you’re discussing what it can be, and who going to play what role, that’s a kind of like a fantasy football game. You can imagine these different dream teams interpreting these characters that only exist in your head.

Ed Norton is probably one of the smartest people I’ve ever met.

Have you seen McConaughey in ‘Unsolved Mysteries?’ Even back then, it’s a great performance! And he’s mowing the lawn.

In a city like New York, especially for young professionals who aren’t in a family situation, most people don’t cook for themselves. This is the only city I’ve ever lived in where I eat out every night.

I love the idea of 3D, but it’s completely superfluous to most stories.

Writing, for me, is an inherent part of understanding the material on a deeper level.

‘True Detective’ would not pass The Bechdel Test.

My friends just make fun of me in some shape or form.

There’s a lot of two-hander dialogue in ‘True Detective,’ and I needed to place those guys in locations where there were other levels of visual storytelling. It didn’t necessarily have to move the plot forward, but it had to add tone or add to the overall feeling.

After ‘Sin Nombre,’ I just needed to take a break to go to completely different worlds.

There’s nothing I find more lazy than unmotivated camerawork just to make things look interesting.

I began writing fictional stories and little screenplays when I was in fifth grade.