When shooting in real spaces, the work of a cinematographer begins where location meets production design meets time of day. No movie light will ever look as real as the sun, so scheduling becomes truly paramount to naturalistic lighting.
At the end of the day it’s got to be a good movie, it’s got to be a funny movie, and it’s got to make people think, ‘Hey, I couldn’t have spent my time any better.’
I’m a movie buff. My mom would take me to a double feature. We’d come out, go have Chinese food, and then go back into another cinema and see another double feature. I feel I’m a child of the movies.
Look at every action movie in Hollywood. Every leading man from Spider-Man to Batman to James Bond, ‘Bourne Identity’, every one of them possesses martial arts skills.
I enjoyed ‘The Avengers.’ I couldn’t do that kind of movie though. Superheroes aren’t my deal.
I don’t know what your childhood was like, but we didn’t have much money. We’d go to a movie on a Saturday night, then on Wednesday night my parents would walk us over to the library. It was such a big deal, to go in and get my own book.
Life is the movie you see through your own eyes. It makes little difference what’s happening out there. It’s how you take it that counts.
My purpose is to make a movie to make you warm. To give you some heat. Now, this rational world has become a place where only what is cool is good. Do you cut the movie on the basis of the beat of modernity or the basis of the beat of your own heart?
The instant that movies became described as character driven was the instant when characters stopped mattering in movies. In other words, the birth of the notion of the character-driven movie coincided with the birth of movies in which characters were incidental to the very activities in which they engaged.
It is not like I want all my films to run for more than 100 days. But I can’t stand it when my movie is criticized.
Is there a movie I think I should have won the Oscar for? Yeah. All of them.
Everyone’s the hero in their own story. You’ve lived your life. You’re the good guy of your life, the protagonist of your own movie. Everyone knows that they have more in them to offer than they sometimes show.
The best part about the movie, and everybody seems to rave about it, is the boot camp part.
When the movie’s done, you talk about either the score or source music over a particular scene, what might work. You just throw a piece of music over the scene, and we both listen to it.
‘Footloose’ is a fun movie. If you do it right, people should leave wanting to dance.
People have a preconceived notion about who I am and it’s interesting. It’s like picking who you want to win for the Oscars and not seeing the movie. Before you make a statement about someone, get all the information and see everything before you make a judgment.
I never had any ambitions of being a movie star or anything like that, but you know, this is nice.
What Western society teaches us is that if you get enough money, power, and beautiful people to have sex with, that’s going to bring you happiness. That’s what every commercial, every magazine, music, movie teaches us. That’s a fallacy.
I auditioned for ‘Avatar’ in Australia. It was a ‘blind’ audition. I didn’t know what the movie was about and whom it was for.
So how critics will perceive your film or your work, or whether your movie is going to make $100 million at the box office, or whether you are going to be winning any awards – well, you have no control over that.
I wasn’t thrilled about ‘The Sound Of Music’ – not the movie itself but my role in it. Captain Von Trapp was a bore, and they tried to help by giving it a bit more cynicism, but it wasn’t my favourite role. I enjoyed the music, and I loved Julie Andrews.
There’s nothing that can beat the feeling of doing a movie or a TV show that makes everyone feel good.
Everyone has an idea that they think would be a great movie. Everyone has a cousin who they think you should work with.
It’d be great to do some other TV. ‘Breaking Bad’ is definitely my home, but I’d love to have a nice hiatus gig, like a recurring role. Or to do a good film. I’d like to do a Woody Allen movie. I really didn’t have a plan, and that’s okay with me.
You don’t make a movie by yourself; you certainly don’t make a TV show by yourself. You invest people in their work. You make people feel comfortable in their jobs; you keep people talking.
An important part of my story is that I didn’t walk out of Planned Parenthood immediately after witnessing the ultrasound-guided abortion. It is made to appear that way in the film, ‘Unplanned,’ because they are trying to fit 10 years of my life into an hour-and-a-half-long movie.
I’m vomiting days before I start shooting a new movie.
I’m not that good looking… nobody is that good looking. I have seen a lot of movie stars, and maybe four are amazing looking. The rest have a team of gay guys who make it happen.
I think the older that I’m getting, the more I’m understand what a privileged job I have, and what an opportunity I have. Now I’m directing films and I’m getting my first movie in America off the ground, and you start to understand how the system really works.
My main aim has always been to do good quality films with roles that have some substance. With Power and Beauty there were loads of things that I liked about the movie, which made me opt for it.
When you put on the glasses in a 3-D movie they just kind of sit there and you forget about them.
After all those years in Asia, I don’t have to do promotion anymore. We just release a Jackie Chan movie and – Boom! – people go.
I’m a child of the Disney Renaissance, so the new classics are near and dear. I suppose this is a legend more than a fairy tale, but ‘Mulan’ is easily my favorite. Not only is it a fun, action-packed, beautiful movie, but it’s so important for young girls to have.
You don’t get music in your daily life, do you? Even in a movie, it’s unnatural to have music. I always feel it’s unnatural. But I want to make it not unnatural, to construct reality in another sense.
Every celebrity in the world, if their movie bombs or whatever, they hold their kid up on a magazine and say, ‘I’m really a dad.’
A friend, Sean Cunningham, who went on to do ‘Friday the 13th,’ was given a small budget to produce a scary movie, and he told me to write something. I’d never seen a horror film in my life; I’d fallen in love with Fellini.
How the audience as a collectivity feels about a movie is important.
For me when I watch ‘The Shining,’ it’s like watching a home movie. I understand how it scares people. I think it’s an entertaining movie, don’t get me wrong. But I look back on it with so many memories.
‘3’ was initially not a feature film but a short movie.
I studied fine arts and architecture, but I decided to move into movie design because I grew up in a small town in the Marche region and spent a lot of time after school in the movie theater.
The Wonder Woman that you see in ‘Batman v Superman’ is a woman who has been around, and she’s very experienced. She understands a lot about man. Whereas, in the standalone movie, we are telling the grown-up story, Diana becoming Wonder Woman, and this was a story that was never told before.
My favorite movie is ‘The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.’
When I’m not training for a movie, it’s more relaxed. I do a lot of running. Usually I’ll run four to six miles about three times a week. You try to eat right, but you don’t always.
I remember when I was about 18, Sean Penn made a bet with me. He had just directed his first movie, and he’s like, ‘By the time you’re 30, I will bet you $500 that you’ll be sick of acting.’ I’m still waiting to collect, because I’m not.
I always tell clients you have to be able to remember why you chose to do a movie: to always be able to look at a movie and know, whether it’s good or bad, why you chose to do it.
Any time you make a movie where you’re living in a certain head space for an extended period of time, it’s tough not to take a little piece home with you.
Every movie you attack has its challenges, and I was excited about the challenges presented by ‘Deadpool.’ I was a huge fan of the original, and I think, as a director, you have to put the script first.
Several hard-core Star Wars fans who had tickets for the first showing actually said that when the movie finally began, they started crying. Mainly because they realized that it’s 22 years later, and they still haven’t lost their virginity.
I love the game of basketball. I guess it started with ‘Space Jam.’ Right after that movie, I went out there to my little Flight hoop and tried to do every dunk in the movie.
I want to be convinced with my work and unless that happens I can’t make a movie.
When I did ‘Good Guys Wear Black,’ I had a lot of dialogue in that movie.
Back in the Seventies, we had a romantic, poetic vision of the future, like it was in the movie ‘2001: A Space Odyssey.’ It felt as if everything was still ahead of us.
I never thought about becoming a professional singer, but I am in touch with Bono about releasing a musical movie. It will be about an Irish band during the ’70s who are looking for fortune in Las Vegas. I should play the singer of the band but I don’t want to sing in front of anybody.
It wasn’t just any film that Paul had been working on. This was a ‘Fast & Furious’ movie. Everyone that was involved had been involved for years.
