Something that I’ve cared about deeply my whole career is getting to work with filmmakers and inventors of stories that are hysterical because they are just so painfully true.
In my little imperfect way, what I’m trying to do is understand the world. As a filmmaker, you realize as you get older that each film is part of a dialogue you’re having with yourself. That started when I was working in documentaries. And in a way, I’ve never deviated from it.
There’s a really fine line between artistic license and artistic licentiousness. And history is a lousy filmmaker. It doesn’t give you all the ingredients you need. No story will quite fulfill that three-act structure.
My stated goal as a filmmaker is to feel something. Is to have a palpable emotion in my life, carry it through the gauntlet of the filmmaking process and try and have it land for an audience at some point during the viewing experience. That to me is successful filmmaking.
Filmmakers have to really find a unique take on something if they’re going to explore an already-explored genre of movies.
Some filmmakers are more eclectic than others. I’m not one of those! I’m interested in what I’m interested in, which is films about the world, about what’s going on. I started in TV documentaries with ‘World in Action,’ and those interests feed into the films I make now.
Right now, I think I have time to be three things, in no particular order: a father, a husband, and a filmmaker. That’s why I don’t go out – I have no space for it. I feel like one of those main things would suffer.
You know, I think Chris Nolan is an incredibly intelligent filmmaker, and I think Leonardo DiCaprio is an incredibly talented actor.
We make movies to endorse our own personal feelings. I am not, in fact, a documentary filmmaker. I’ve got my personal beliefs, and I’m ready to put them out on the table.
As a media artist and filmmaker, I’m constantly considering the role of situational context when creating my work.
I think I’m still trying to find my voice as a filmmaker and finding stories to tell.
It’s rare for the studios to find a filmmaker who wants to make a family film. To find someone that has an idea, embraces it, has kids and wants to make something exciting – well, they don’t see that too often.
When that happens – when risk is taken and the filmmakers dive into the subject matter without a parachute – very often what you get it something with those qualities that make it age well with the public.
I don’t know of a more noble, a bigger deal as a filmmaker than to be a YouTube filmmaker.
‘Hunger’ definitely changed my life, in terms of being recognized by filmmakers, since that was very much a filmmakers’ film.
As a filmmaker, my approach is to come in not with preconceived notions, but with curiosity, and in that way, whether my subjects are James Carville or Anna Wintour or Dick Cheney, I am always surprised.
I think with a lot of filmmakers, their first film is their best film because they had to think on their feet and solve problems with ingenuity.
Well it’s always been an element of the horror film to show us the gross out. I mean that’s one option for all filmmakers making a horror film and it’s not something I’ve found myself above either.
There are consequences with age, so you have to evolve. I’ve loved becoming a filmmaker. But I would love to continue modeling, and there isn’t really any job for me. It’s being marginalized – that’s the sad part.
I could not – and I still cannot – see a sustainable career as a filmmaker in which I focus fully on our gay stories.
There’s a tremendous intellectual fervor among independent filmmakers, and that has to be cultivated.
We’ve gotten to a point where it costs so much money to make a movie that directors and filmmakers feel they have to make sure that everybody gets it. And that’s an unfortunate development, I think, in a lot of narratives floating around in the film industry.
Independent filmmakers already have their heads around people on their couches watching their movies.
I feel like surf films are something I go back to for some balance – to reset myself as a filmmaker. They’re something I’ll always gravitate towards.
I’ve never been very good at creating absolute music, which has no non-musical dimension to it. I think that is why filmmakers gravitated toward my work.
As independent filmmakers, we are actually deeply dependent on each other. The Spirit Awards are a public expression of those bonds, the intricate set of relationships and histories that we filmmakers depend on to make our most personal work.
I can’t impress people with the pedigree of obscure French filmmakers that got me into film. It was Robert Zemeckis and Steven Spielberg. I really thought I wanted to make dumb action movies.
The filmmakers always have a great level of control.
For city dwellers like me who don’t get to vacation in the summer, no filmmaker can so effectively make you feel like you went to France for August, fell in love, got hurt, broke up, grew up, and figured some things out – all in 90 minutes or so. My favorite of Rohmer’s cinematic escapes is ‘La Collectionneuse.’
I didn’t go to film school; I studied fine art – I learned how to be a filmmaker on everybody else’s money.
You find a story – or more importantly, you find some characters – that you want to be around as a filmmaker. The style and how we’re going to shoot it and how we’re going to design it and how it’s all going to feel and look depends on that story. They tell me how I should shoot it.
I think when I got drawn to film, I didn’t know it was a business. I mean, like most filmmakers, I probably saw more films than a lot of people when I was a kid. But I watched them on TV as well. I was no purist about it. I spent lots of time in movie theaters, but I also watched a lot of films on TV.
It’s always nice to have another filmmaker to reassure you that you are making a good quality film.
As filmmakers, we’re constantly always looking for something to bring the audience deeper into the reality of the story we’re telling.
One of our big tools is screening. We screen usually 12 times, which is much more than most filmmakers do, and we recut in between each one, because we really need to feel how the audience is reacting to the movie.
‘Sunshine’ is really an experiment for me to see if I am a filmmaker beyond having my own stories to tell.
Every filmmaker has this short book of films that don’t get made – for a whole host of reasons.
Producing is so exciting because you can enable things to happen, whether it’s like discovering a filmmaker who you’re taking a chance on, protecting a battle and driving home at the end of the day just going, ‘I’m so glad I stayed late at work and fought hard for that. Had my passion. Won that battle.’
Just in the past few years – since I’ve been making movies, which isn’t a very long time – you now have a culture that is fascinated and informed about the box office in a way that sometimes filmmakers weren’t even.
I wanted to be a filmmaker since I was a kid. I always did things that took me a little closer to that.
As someone who’s been a filmmaker and an editor, I was wary of being on camera.
Early 1900s Hollywood was full of farmers battling to hold onto their land against a new influx of filmmakers who dug Hollywood’s reliable weather and diverse landscape.
For young filmmakers, Saw is a perfect film. It doesn’t cost the GNP of almost every country of the world.
I’m a gamer at heart and always have been. I’m also a filmmaker.
For me, I’m a filmmaker because, above all, I’m an explorer. It’s my way of exploring and investigating the problems, the questions, and the mysteries about what it means to be human that vex me most, that keep me up at night, and that, when I finally fall asleep, insinuate themselves into my dreams.
I’ve been a documentary photographer for much longer than I have been a filmmaker.
As intelligent and responsible filmmakers, working in a free society, we have a duty to ensure that our chosen medium is a force for good. Especially in this ever-more complex and difficult world.
As a filmmaker, one tends to want to evolve evermore towards a place of independence.
You can’t blame movies for embracing spectacle; filmmakers since D.W. Griffith and Cecil B. De Mille have loved spectacle, and spectacle is something that movies convey like no other medium, especially in a digital age.
Film is a mirror. I want to see more filmmakers. We all want to see ourselves.
A filmmaker has almost the same freedom as a novelist has when he buys himself some paper.
Any filmmakers out there want a Welshman with sharp cheekbones and wonky teeth to play the love interest in their movie, give me a call.
I’ve always adored the filmmaker Sam Fuller. The first time I watched ‘Shock Corridor’ was such a magnificent discovery. I love his lack of subtlety, the way he tackles serious topics with bold and inappropriate humor.
I don’t know what to say about it except Tom Hanks is a great person, a serious person; he’s dissatisfied in a very likeable way, in a very discreet way, and Steven Spielberg is similar in his discretion and drive. But Spielberg is calm. He’s this driven filmmaker and visionary. He really is.
Well, I think one of the reasons Chicago became so popular as a filmmaker location is because New York had been used so many times that Chicago, I think, was rediscovered maybe in the late ’60s, early ’70s for a long time as a new location.
