Bennett Miller
Before I find myself in the middle of a project, I want to make sure it is the kind of thing that keeps me excited for two years. Otherwise, it will be very difficult to push the proverbial rock up the proverbial mountain.
I think in terms of content and subjects and whatever kind of production it dictates. Can I conceive of an idea that would really connect with my personal rhythms and cost a lot of money? I don't gravitate in that direction, but it is possible.
It couldn't be more satisfying to work on something almost anonymously for years, then to have it received affectionately with support.
I don't want to sound too spiritual, but when you are true to yourself and follow through with things that connect with you meaningfully, somehow things fall into place.
People without fathers tend to have two predominant characteristics. They tend to believe anything is possible. At the same time there's an anxiety and an unending insecurity. It's a very American thing because back in the past, we lost our fathers or father. The king.
The version of 'Moneyball' I pitched - and we made - is about a guy, Billy Beane, who thinks he's trying to win baseball games. But it's deeper than that.
I definitely have moments in my life where I discovered a film, and the language of the film itself spoke to me in a way, as if someone came up to you and started speaking a language you'd never heard but understood and was able to express things the language you knew could not.
There's always something happening in pretty much every moment of every scene of everything I've ever worked on in longform that's not being expressed or acknowledged.
It's amazing how much you will forgive if the behavior is truthful.
I like to rehearse to the point we're in the ballpark, and expect that we're only going to get one proper take, more or less.
Capote is one of those people who represents something larger than himself. I think that his ambition, his kind of success, and the downfall that followed are very contemporary.
Kubrick has a divining rod for the concealed, alienating secrets of characters.
The silence of a room when someone enters with a gun is very different from the sound that room makes when empty.
I am nostalgic for those man-behind-the-curtain days when someone could get away with impersonating Kubrick because nobody had any idea what Kubrick looked like.
The one thing I'll say is I was a quiet kid. Much more of an observer than a performer.
As a filmmaker, you're looking to reveal something. When other people relate to it, it makes an otherwise lonely world a little less lonely.
It's about creating an atmosphere so that characters can just live in front of the cameras. And to be sensitive, and for the actor to know the sensitivity that they are being observed with.
I'm not going to take something based on budget and do something just for the sake of it. I want to make good films.
There is a very uneasy relationship between money and creativity, between money and almost everything. Its tendency to control and corrupt - whether it's in arts or education or politics, hardly anything is untouched by it. Journalism certainly is up there. Everything is susceptible to it.
Mark Ruffalo is Mark Ruffalo - no explanation needed. He has the biggest heart of anyone I've ever met, and he's sort of the Dave Schultz of the entertainment industry.
It's important for an actor to feel like they're really being watched and to receive feedback and encouragement about the aspects of what they're doing that feels truthful - and also to raise awareness when they might be resorting to habits and tricks, which every actor has.
I think when an actor feels like they're being watched with great sensitivity and a subtle eye and a nose for truthfulness, that has some effect.
Every film requires a different process. You learn about these particular actors and the particular chemistry between these actors. Recognizing when you don't need to shoot a scene because it's going to be cut anyway.
I am attracted to characters who are in worlds where they don't belong and who have great ambitions that they imagine will somehow reconcile themselves with the world and make things right.
When I learned a little bit about du Pont and a little bit about Mark Schultz, I was attracted to the notion that these incredibly different people found each other and seemed, for a moment, to be the answer that each was looking for.
I don't know of a filmmaker who does not feel buoyed and lifted when their peers embrace the work.
Making a film is a challenge.
It's hard. It's hard to get a film made properly.
There's really powerful and potentially dominating forces when you make a film that can harm it if you're incapable of orchestrating things.
Chemistry exists or it doesn't, and I think casting is a very underappreciated component of filmmaking.
I think all good sports movies aren't really about sports.
I've never even watched one of my films since they're completed.
I really tried to get comfortable with the notion of shooting digital on 'Foxcatcher' and just couldn't. I shot many tests and experimented with all sorts of techniques to manipulate it into a place that worked for us, but it just didn't happen.
Silence is absorption, and when you're watching a film and you're that quiet and you're that still, at least from my experience of watching films, that indicates an absorption, where you're really in the moment. You're really present. What you're seeing is vital to you in that moment, and it's tingling, and it's alive, and it matters.
I don't like sensationalizing events. Instead of making waves, I want to make everything settle, so we can see to the bottom of things.
I don't have many rules, but one of them is, 'Do not make a movie you yourself would not want to see.'
If you have a vision for something, things are navigable. If it gets fuzzy, then obstacles become much more formidable.
A lot of the time, excess on a film set is just damaging.
I do have that compulsion to organize moments into a larger thing.