I have to embrace the fact people find me divisive, but I find it remarkable. I was very disturbed by the hatred ‘Damsels in Distress’ received.
The great thing for me is how Hitchcock uses guilt so well. He implicates the spectator in the character’s field, and you really feel it, and there’s incredible relief when it comes out right – if it does come out right.
I identify entirely with Jane Austen’s point of view, on everything.
I like things that are sort of comic and humorous rather than satirical.
Oscar Wilde was sort of my first love as a young reader. And then I went on to love Jane Austen’s wonderful – this sort of comedy coming from her. I mean, all of her books are comic.
You have to constantly work on your script if it needs it. You don’t accept, ‘Oh, I did a draft and…’ No, it’s your responsibility to work on the script as much as possible and make it better and better.
Coming out of college, back to New York, where I didn’t really know that many people, I thought our world was very atomized.
When people are telling stories on screen, you can show the reactions of people, play it off those reactions, and it can be fun. But when it’s someone just giving an opinion on things, even if the opinion is kind of interesting, that is potentially deadly. It has to be really quick.
You can be an American or an Englishman or Canadian and be a Parisian. It’s a very admirable culture, and people want to identify with it.
I’m anti-verite. I think the verite style is a completely false thing. Most things are false to arrive at a truth; verite is falsity without acknowledging its falsity.
When you’re trying to force things in a script, it seems like it’s getting somewhere, but it isn’t real or interesting. All the bad material you’ve written becomes an albatross around your neck. So I really don’t like writing a lot of bad stuff, I prefer to just keep narrowing it down to stuff I think is solid.
I’m the ayatollah of the Jane Austen fan base! I want to lead the fan base, not be attacked and devoured by the fan base.
I don’t think there’s anything cliche feminine about Jane Austen. And, anyway, her earliest champions were Sir Walter Scott and the Prince Regent.
Paris is the destination for brokenhearted American women. I think men go there and have their hearts broken, but women come there with their hearts broken.
What frustrates me a lot about some aspects of filmmaking is people thinking everyone is really dumb and that we have to make everything really obvious.
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