The remarkable thing about ‘Avatar’ is the degree to which the technology is integral to the story. It is important to show Pandora and its Na’Vi natives in 3-D because ‘Avatar’ is fundamentally about the moral necessity of seeing other beings fully.
The redemption plot is one of the oldest story shapes.
Writing a story or a novel is one way of discovering sequence in experience, of stumbling upon cause and effect in the happenings of a writer’s own life.
As a novelist, you could say that I am dreaming while I am awake, and every day I can continue with yesterday’s dream. Because it is a dream, there are so many contradictions and I have to adjust them to make the story work. But, in principle, the original dream does not change.
I’ve read a lot of really great characters in some really crappy stories, where I said, like, ‘Boy I could shine here, but the story sucks.’ I don’t want to be part of that.
If I can tell someone a story that makes them bend over and laugh, that’s bigger than anything else.
My story as an artist has been about trial and error. It’s been about artist development, character building, struggle, happiness and failure, family, and music.
I love a ghost story. I think they affect me more than other people that are much more skeptical than I am. I think that it’s good that I do buy into them to some degree.
I go to South Dakota for ceremonies when I have the time. And when you learn what the Indian peoples have gone through to hold onto their culture and traditions… wow, it’s an amazing story.
I think that, anybody with a strong will to tell a story, then that is fantastic. I think it’s fantastic. I think sometimes people have what I’ll call an ulterior motive with a story.
No matter how close to personal experience a story might be, inevitably you are going to get to a part that isn’t yours and, actually, whether it happened or not becomes irrelevant. It is all about choosing the right words.
I think the reason ‘Sexy Beast’ was so good was it wasn’t just another run-of-the-mill gangster film; it was a love story.
My story is a freedom song of struggle. It is about finding one’s purpose, how to overcome fear and to stand up for causes bigger than one’s self.
I like for jewelry to tell a story and to be able to talk about what I’m wearing. That’s more important to me than a name, brand, or label.
To me, the only way we’ll see a collective change in this country is by listening to people who have experienced life in the margins of society, who have lived less privileged versions of my story, in systemic poverty and facing structural racism.
With ‘Badlapur’, I wasn’t even thinking about casting. I was wondering whether any producer will want to make a film with a story like this. It is not your expected, feel-good, or even your regular thriller.
Just about any story we think about doing, whether we’ve read it in a newspaper, heard it on the radio or come upon it through word of mouth – by the time you get there, every other network, cable station and talk show is already racing to the scene.
Every great story seems to begin with a snake.
My father was the doyen of the divorce barristers. He was an extremely erudite and very famous divorce barrister. So that, when I was a little boy in the nursery, instead of a story like ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,’ I used to get ‘The Duchess and the Seven Correspondents.’
A good love story always keeps the pot boiling.
If you drill down on any success story, you always discover that luck was a huge part of it. You can’t control luck, but you can move from a game with bad odds to one with better odds. You can make it easier for luck to find you. The most useful thing you can do is stay in the game.
Animation offers a medium of story telling and visual entertainment which can bring pleasure and information to people of all ages everywhere in the world.
I believe the most important thing for the media is to be objective, fair, and balanced. We should not report a story with preconceptions or prejudice.
Usually when I’m making a movie, what I have in mind first, for the visuals, is how we can stage the scenes to bring them more to life in the most interesting way, and then how we can make a world for the story that the audience hasn’t quite been in before.
I used to think, ‘How can I write my life story? I’m still living it.’
The main thing that I learned from editing is that most people, when they’re making a film, they start too early into the story. They will try to set up the characters, they will try to establish things before the plot actually starts.
There are things I’ve done in the past I’m not proud of – and I could talk about them if I wanted to – but I don’t reveal my secrets… I prefer certain things to remain personal; there have to be boundaries. And I don’t think you need a scandal to have an interesting story.
‘Marley and Me’ was a book I was proud of and believed in, but I thought it would just have a modest audience because it is such a personal story about my marriage and my family.
My whole life story is kind of a backhanded compliment.
Die and born again, die and born again. It’s the story of my life.
I have always wanted to tell my story – or, more to the point, my side of the story.
If I’m gonna tell a real story, I’m gonna start with my name.
Looting has an immense impact on our ability to understand our global cultural heritage; once these objects are gone, so too is our chance of piecing together humanity’s shared story.
You are responsible for the choices you make in this life period, end of story.
People are generally proud of their food. A willingness to eat and drink with people without fear and prejudice… they open up to you in ways that somebody visiting who is driven by a story may not get.
Sure I do a lot of jokes about Anne Frank. But when you do those jokes, it makes people remember what happened to her. That process of bringing her story back doesn’t have to be a serious one. What I say is all nonsense, but it helps to keep her memory alive.
I guarantee you that two directors that are any good can take the same story, change the name of the characters, change the name of the town, and make an entirely different picture.
The script of ‘Shogun’ was so tight that you could not take a word out of a sentence, you could not take a sentence out of a scene, and you certainly couldn’t take out a scene without putting ripples right through the back or the front of the overall story.
A really irritating thing when you’re watching a film is if somebody’s accent isn’t bang-on – it distracts you from getting into the story because you’re thinking: ‘Where are they from?’
‘Grbavica’ is first of all a story about love, about love that is not pure because it has been mixed with hate, disgust, trauma, despair.
I now find magic in the mundane. I’m also more creative – better able to look beyond the obvious and come up with new story angles.
I have actually been very fortunate to be able to make films on my own credit card without having huge funders behind me dictating how the story should be told.
I’m not an artist. I set the camera up and tell my story.
I hope I didn’t bore you too much with my life story.
Our top story tonight: Famous TV dolphin flipper was arrested today on prostitution ring charges. He allegedly was seen transporting two 16 year olds across state line for immoral porpoises.
Look at the films of Walt Disney: ‘Snow White’ came out in February 1938, and I can’t think of another film from that year that’s watched as much. The same is true of ‘Bambi,’ ‘Dumbo’… even, frankly, ‘Toy Story,’ which is probably watched more than any other movie of 1995.
For every profanity, there’s a story behind it. People should go beyond my cussing.
I think the lesson is that when you give black voices a platform and the opportunity to tell our story, we will tell good stories just like anybody else.
When you’re telling a story, the best stories, every character has an arc. Every one. And that arc is usually about finding yourself, or about at least finding something about yourself that you didn’t know.
For all my life, I’ve been trying to tell Madam’s story and really it’s a labor of love just to make sure people know about her and the empowerment she gave to other women.
Animation is just another way of telling a story.
Surely the whole point of writing your own life story is to be as honest as you possibly can, revealing everything about yourself that is most private and probably most interesting for that very reason.
I have an image of Shanghai, which is quite different from other directors, I think. The story of Shanghai should happen in back alleys.
I don’t have writer’s block, really. I do have times when I can’t get the lead, and that is the only part of the story which I have serious trouble with. I don’t write a word of the article until I have the lead. It just sets the whole tone – the whole point of view.
I grew up never seeing myself on-screen, and it’s really important to me to give people who look like me a chance to see themselves. I want to see myself as the hero of any story. I want to see myself save the world from the bomb.
I like it when somebody tells me a story, and I actually really feel that that’s becoming like a lost art in American cinema.
