I don’t know any filmmaker who can deconstruct their own work.
My favorite film is ‘The Shining,’ mostly because it was the film that inspired me to become a filmmaker myself.
I found out I wanted to be a filmmaker almost by accident after graduating from college in 2005.
Sometimes, I think filmmakers grab too much from real life.
You know, my dad wasn’t a photographer or filmmaker by profession, but on Sundays, he would take pictures of me and my family or his pals horseback riding, and it was a means of communication and affection, a means of not being so dysfunctional with each other.
I love indie movies. I think that independent cinema is where it’s at and where a lot of trends begin. It’s where new filmmakers are breaking through.
I’ve always thought that guns are a cowardly tool in the hands of men and women trying to solve problems with each other. And cowardly in the hands of filmmakers. It’s taken so lightly in films.
I’ve been involved with violent movies, and then I’ve also said at a certain point, ‘I can’t take it anymore. Please cut it.’ You know, you’ve got to respect the filmmaker, and it’s a really tough issue.
I think the press mistakenly thought that all of these ‘mumblecore’ filmmakers were banded together in a similar ideology, but the truth is that we were all just using the same digital camera and helping each other make our movies because we were broke, and we were the only idiots willing to do it.
I hear filmmakers saying, ‘I wanted to make to make a film about this issue, or this theme,’ but I never start like that.
I, too, started off as a short filmmaker – though none of them have been screened, it served as a practice session to help me learn the nuances of filmmaking.
A lot of filmmakers understand that the work is done digitally, and it’s technically possible to change it late in the game.
‘Fury’ whetted my appetite for a bigger canvas and this idea of world creation. You can do amazing things as a filmmaker if you have the proper tools, and those are time and money.
I do think Australians as a rule have a very good sensibility to them, and I think most people, if they were given the option, wouldn’t choose to rip off a filmmaker or an artist – I don’t think its part of the Australian psyche.
It’s called ‘Crazy Rich Asians,’ but it’s really not about crazy rich Asians. It’s about Rachel Chu finding her identity and finding her self-worth through this journey back into her culture. Which, for me as a filmmaker, exploring my cultural identity is the scariest thing.
I feel like people with their camera phones and Twitter and Facebook, this kind of question like, ‘How can I be present and also document my presence or document what I’m doing?’ is something that’s always on my mind, even when I’m not working as a filmmaker.
Hindsight is the most dangerous thing imaginable for me. I imagine that’s the case for most filmmakers. And I would love to be a filmmaker who was an exception to that rule, but I’m certainly not.
I believe ‘3’ was ahead of its time. It was closer to my comfort zone and, like most debut filmmakers, I drew extensively from my own life.
It’s just incredible. When you’re French, coming from a non-English language country, you don’t even dream about Oscar recognition or nominations. It’s just beyond the dream. It’s something very, very special and unique. It’s the highest recognition any filmmaker could dream of.
Belfast has many advantages for the filmmakers, one of which is the existence of an airport right in the middle of the city.
‘Mayabazar’ was the film I immensely loved as a kid. Only when I became a filmmaker about 20 years later did I realise its technical marvel and what a great epic it was. I and my visual effects supervisor, while making ‘Yamadonga,’ took two days to understand the magnification shot of Ghatothkatcha’s persona.
I think it’s important that filmmakers look at the technology and figure out how to make the theatrical experience a little more exciting.
I don’t know whether it’s audiences or filmmakers who want characters to be likable today, but I don’t think actors are afraid of their characters being unlikable.
I’m married to a nurse, and she is really, really ardent that – in screenplays or movies that I’ve worked on, that all the medical aspects be properly presented. I think that filmmakers ought to be respectful of all fields and not just be lazy and put nonsense in movies because most people won’t know the difference.
I don’t think I take risks. People think I do, but I don’t. In fact, I think conventional-formula filmmakers take more risks than me.
Being the son of a filmmaker, you are aware of a career as a director. You don’t think of it as just movies, but as a life.
I was very impressed with Davis Guggenheim’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth.’ He’s inspired me as one of the newer, cutting-edge documentary filmmakers. I see those films, and I’m just instinctively drawn to them.
Geeks run the world. Condoleezza Rice is a geek, Bill Gates is clearly a geek, many of the big filmmakers and writers are geeks, lots of military people are geeks. Anyone who has heard Donald Rumsfeld talk about military hardware knows they are in the presence of a geek.
I think that, as a filmmaker, you’re always making the same film, regardless of how many different stories you tell. This is the case for me, whether I’m making documentaries or fiction films.
Look, I’m going to take full advantage of this situation just because I love working with great filmmakers. But I’ve been around for a while, and I’m not going to play into the hype that I’m some great, you know, discovery.
While the documentary community is way ahead of Hollywood, it is still nowhere near where it needs to be. Filmmakers of color rarely get hired by the powerful production companies, and they are not getting supported enough by broadcasters and funders to tell their own stories.
In the Woodstock movie, you see Justin, my son, who is now a filmmaker, being carried off by my wife at the time to the helicopter. He’s just this little bundle of joy in her arms. And it’s 1969.
For a lot of filmmakers, their first goal is to be successful and make some money. But once people start doing that, the real goal is then to win an Academy Award. Because when they do, they know that their obit is going to start out, ‘Academy Award winner so-and-so.’
I’ve had filmmakers, I even had Bono come and talk to me about having a sequel to ‘E.T.’ help with an environmental message – I listened. I can certainly understand. I mean, the great thing about Bono is that everything he does is in service to a greater cause.
The truth of the matter is, I’m a filmmaker.
What I would say to filmmakers, if I may be so bold or so arrogant, is to draw inspiration from other filmmakers, but go to the place in your own gut where everything is nothing. That’s a very Zen thing to say, but that place of nothing is where real creativity comes out of.
My cousin Malcolm Lee is also a filmmaker.
It’s only normal for me to work with my family because I think they are talented and because there’s a warmth when I’m working. As a filmmaker, sometimes you are very fragile. You are in a very fragile situation most of the time. I think it’s important to be surrounded by people you just get along with.
One fear setting on filmmakers is that the audience no longer has any patience. They want things to constantly move.
Even reading my first bad review was an awesome experience. It was cool because you make something and not everybody’s going to like it. I felt like that kind of grew me up a little bit into a professional. I was a student filmmaker, and no one writes reviews about student films.
If you aim for parody right off the bat and it misses, no offense to the filmmakers, but it is Meet the Spartans.
As a documentary filmmaker, I’m very respectful, and my interview style is not intrusive. I don’t really have an agenda. I just go in there, I mumble something or other, I wait for them to speak, and I wait for them to stop.
Every filmmaker has his own vision, and when they write a film or characters, they see certain people in those characters.
I am not a part of Bollywood. Nobody cares about me in Bollywood and I have mentally resigned from Bollywood long ago. I am an independent filmmaker.
I like to read and dream and create music that is based on the imagery of text. If you have the combination of a great book and a great filmmaker, what could be better for the composer?
I like Spike Lee a lot. He’s incredibly gifted and I don’t think he gets the credit he deserves as a filmmaker.
I don’t think women are that vastly different from men. I’m a bit of a woman myself. But I’m not a feminist filmmaker. I’m not making a feminist thesis to prove that women are important. I just happen to make films with strong characters that are women.
Given the kind of filmmaker I am, the kind of experiences I’ve been trying to give audiences, I was drawn to the potential of VR before I even tried watching anything in VR.
I still have energy and some degree of youth, which is what a filmmaker needs.
I took up acting upon the insistence of my filmmaker father, Kasthuri Raja. But I am glad for it: sometimes one identifies one’s calling; sometimes it singles one out.
The most important thing as a filmmaker, the hardest journey you’ll have, is to find your point of view.
