Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
Do you know the phrase, 'The word 'water' will not wet you?' It's one thing to write down an idea and another thing entirely to execute it.
My kid will come home from seeing the latest 'Transformers' movie, and I'll ask him, 'How was it?' 'Amazing!' 'What was it about?' 'I don't know, but it was amazing!'
I don't have a career. I have a life.
Antonio Sanchez is from Mexico City. I met him at a Pat Metheny concert. He did a solo, and I thought, 'This is an octopus man!'
Ultimately, with every film I'd done before, there was a reference. They have their own uniqueness, but there was always a precedent.
I've listened to music all my life. I've always felt that music tells more stories sometimes than films, with more possibilities. Every time you listen to them, songs bring different images and moods - depending on where you are in your life, you can listen to a song, and it means something different.
I like to make films, but the only reason I do is because I'm a very bad musician.
When I went to university, I finally got exposed to European films, and they had a strong impact on me. I felt those films had a lot of things to say that weren't getting expressed in the films I was used to seeing.
Sometimes reading scripts is terrible.
The problem with the screenplay is that it's not literature, and it's not a film. It's a very weird, technical kind of blueprint that will be absolutely transformed into something else that is not that, you know? Honestly, a screenplay is no literature.
I think intelligence basically can be in a way defined by the possibility of having two opposite ideas living together and at the same time functioning. That's why I think a smart script has two things living in the same place, and they're absolutely contradictory.
We want to conquer the world and have 1,000 likes, 1 million likes, but at the same time, we are depressed. We are lonely, but we have 10,000 followers. We are all bipolar.
I always have considered Michael Keaton to be a phenomenal actor because he navigates drama and comedy.
It's very healthy to be aware of your ego.
I'm an intense person.
Who cares about my opinions?
I have never met a superhero, but why are we so obsessed with superheroes?
When I was about to turn 50, I went into a kind of personal revision and observed my own priorities and what led those priorities in my life. And many things that, in a way, were profound.
'21 Grams' is only one story told by three different points of view, but they are really physically connected - literally, with the heart.
My responsibility is to make a film and find my dramatic language; I don't have any political or social responsibility.
Cinema is an infinite medium, so we should take advantage of it, I think.
I never deny a true experience in one shot.
I really try, at least consciously, not to be cynical or ironic.
I don't like the ironic tone that our pop culture, in the world, has taken. Everything is 'ironic.' Everything is 'cool.'
I am not a depressive person at all.
The cavemen, when they saw the antelopes, they had to scratch them on to the caves because they needed to express the immediacy of what they were being affected by - and I love that. That is why I do what I do. I need to express myself.
I have fantastic ideas.
'Biutiful' is a tough film. It doesn't make concessions to the vulgarity of light entertainment. It's not the kind of film that you see every day in the Cineplex. But as an artist, it's the thing that I needed to do.
In families you can find the source of every human drama. It is interesting because the cell of a society, the cell of a country, the cell of humanity - everything lies in the family.
I started off writing TV adverts. I saw those as rehearsals for a feature film.
I think musically.
Films like 'Babel' can transcend the one point-of-view formula that has reigned for so long.
While 'Babel' is a foreign-language film in some countries, in others, it is a local film.
When you do a film in a foreign language, you know there's a cost in it, that you know, unfortunately, the audiences of foreign language films have not been cultivated. There's a market, but the market has been reduced, unfortunately, and you know that when you're making a foreign language film, you're making a choice.
I have learned that I am a one-woman man.
I'm always surprised when some director says, 'When I saw this film, that changed my life.' I don't have that.
I really didn't want to become branded as 'that multistructural guy.'
Time is what allows stories to spread into people's consciousness.
On a transcendental level, a film is not going to be better or worse because there's a prize behind it. The work will be what it is, with or without a prize.
People talk about the pain of defeat, but I think defeat has a lot of value. I think the wound of victory can be even more damaging than defeat. Very few people really know how to win.
If art doesn't move people, then art has failed.
I define myself from a vision, from a point of view of life.
For me, the most important thing that I have to accomplish is to be a good father. That's the most difficult challenge of my life. That's the most important thing for me, more than films.
Writing is not an unknown territory for me.
I'm less interested in reality. I'm more interested in perception, the truth of the universe that we see.
I love the three-act theory. It works and works beautifully. But you don't necessarily have to structure a story that way: Cortazar and Borges wrote in different structural styles.
I have ADD. I can't pay attention to one thing too long.
Movies become art after editing. Instead of just reproducing reality, they juxtapose images of it. That implies expression; that's art.
The way I put together images is a reactive art.