Gavin Hood
Athol Fugard became famous as a playwright, so although 'Tsotsi' the book was written in the '60s, it was only published in the '80s. It was then optioned pretty much every year by producers. I think the problem was that holding onto its period setting made it very hard to get finance.Collection: Finance
Most big popcorn movies are 'bad guy does something to good guy, good guy gets revenge on bad guy, sets the world right, and moves on.' And 'Ender's Game' is just not that simple, so it's an exciting challenge. It's a little terrifying, and let's see how audiences respond.Collection: Movies
It is a myth to think that sometimes creative disagreement doesn't necessarily produce a better result.
The first prize for any production is, if you can find a location that means you don't have to build sets, that will serve, and is not excessively expensive to hire, then it can save you a lot of money.
I think people forget that a lot of directing is just real management of the size of a production.
You can sustain visual beauty and innovative visual ideas for a certain length of time, but in a two-hour experience, which is really what movies are, usually audiences - whether they know it or not - most want an emotional connection to character.
The truth about people at every economic level of life is you get those who are kind and who are not, those who are greedy, whether they be rich or poor. That's a common thread through humanity on any street you go to.
For me, one of the privileges of being a writer is to poke your nose around and learn about worlds you don't know.
My first experience with film was through a still camera. I would sit, very much against my will, with my father in the game reserve, watching some elephant or rhino or whatever, through a 400 millimeter lens and wait, and waiting and waiting.
When you're used to looking through a stills lens and you have to capture an emotional moment, and that picture is not moving and yet it has to have impact, I think that's the first influence on my style.
The truth about filmmaking is you have all these ideas and you're trying to convince everybody that they should buy into this idea, but at two o'clock in the morning when you're all on your own you're going, 'Geez, I hope I know what I'm doing. I hope this idea is gonna work.'
Part of what's so tricky in a film that's two hours long is how many themes can you effectively explore.
The reality is that art has often risen to greater heights than the people who created it. Many flawed artists have created great works of art. You have to decide if you are going to listen to Richard Wagner's music or not because he was very anti-Semitic.
For me, emotion comes first. If I have to change a scene, invent a scene, change dialogue, or put Graff by the lake in order to feel that dynamic, and the end results feels like 'Ender's Game,' then hopefully it works.
My tools, my medium, include pictures and live actors.
The question I ask myself when adapting a book is how do I be true to the spirit and soul of the character? How would I describe this character in my medium? If you asked one person to do a painting of something and another to create a sculpture of it, you'll never ask, 'Why doesn't the painting look like the sculpture?'
'Ender's Game' has fabulous opportunities for spectacle, where appropriate, but there's also a tremendous central character. It's a balance.
There's always a theme I'm drawn to, that we humans are not good or bad. We're all a mixture of both. We can have great compassion or commit great violence.
I was drafted when I was 17, and I spent two years, and I lost a friend in war.
I worked initially in very low-budget independent films that I often wrote. My early work was all written by myself, and then I adapted 'Tsotsi,' so I was used to the writing process being, in a way, integral to my directing. I felt it really prepared me.
I learned a lot doing 'Wolverine,' and I was also very fortunate, in the sense that I got to do a huge number of visual effects shots.
In the early '90s, I was hired to write educational dramas about HIV and AIDS in the shantytowns. I did that for two and a half years, and then I was hired on other films. When 'Tsotsi' presented itself, I thought, 'This is not a world I grew up in, but I've spent a great deal of time writing about it and researching it in my past.'
In the comic-book lore, of course, you mutate post a traumatic event. You must have the mutant gene, but if something traumatic happens to you, usually at puberty, then that mutation manifests itself.
When we watch stories, we learn empathy, we learn compassion, and hopefully we achieve some sort of understanding.
I don't know many South Africans who don't have their eyes wide open to what it's like to be exposed to some sort of violence. The question is whether we choose to be cynical about it or not.
What's genius about 'Gravity' is that you are close upon the actors, but 3D works best when you have foreground, middle ground and background.
3D prefers you to use wider lenses because when things are out of focus, and yet it's in 3D, it bothers you.
And for the people who promote drones as the answer to everything, there is a danger from being distanced from the reality of the ugly mess of war.Collection: War
When I see big movies that are only about good versus evil, and the good guy wins, I only can think we're in a far more complicated world than that. I frankly think that this binary philosophy is actually a dangerous way to look at the world.Collection: Philosophy
The question becomes, because we're remotely far away from the territory we're about to bomb, does it make it easier to do it? That it is an important question, and the military is asking those questions.Collection: Military
Having been in the military myself, there is an awful moment when you're in this moment of conflict.Collection: Military
Hany Abu-Assad was sitting next to me, and his film 'Paradise Now' had won the Golden Globe. He said to me at the Globes, 'Paradise now, talk to you later.' [laughs] I gave him a big hug for that.Collection: Laughing
One reads many scripts, and some of them are good and some of them are not, but every now and then, one really grabs you. You simply can't put it down.Collection: Scripts
I think if you read the story as bad guy turns good guy, then clearly it is a cliché. But my experience, when I spent three years working with young people in the townships on issues principally around HIV/AIDS, is that people are usually neither entirely good or bad. They are usually variations of both. Just because someone is a carjacker doesn't mean they are a ruthless cold-blooded murderer.Collection: Mean
I am a story-teller working with a craft. My job is to use my craft - which is a different thing to my race - and tell a story well.Collection: Jobs
You have to separate artistic ability from ethnic origin. Not only am I not black, I am also not a woman, therefore how can I direct women? I am also only 42, therefore how can I direct someone who's 60? So you see where the argument ends up? If you take it to its logical conclusion, I would have to walk around and point a video camera at myself. And who the hell is interested in that?Collection: Artistic Ability