Gus Van Sant
I think that for the actors, the last thing that they want is a director that's not watching, a director that goes 'Okay, it sounded good to me,' and they were doing something else or preoccupied with something else because they were worried about the light changing.
In rare cases, I've had music before I shot the movie. I think that for 'Good Will Hunting' I had an Elliot Smith record or a couple of them and I just somehow felt like the sound had something to it that reminded me of the story. So in that case there was music beforehand.
There's a lot of films that have relatively rigid road maps because they have a script and others that are less rigid because they have less of a script, like 'Elephant.' The road map becomes more interpretive, maybe, than one with a detailed script. Editing-wise, they all have their problems.
The reason I know about 'Tomb Raider' is from when I was researching 'Elephant.' It was 1999, and I was trying to research the Columbine-massacre kids, and they had played video games, and I, at the time, had never really seen one. It was a world I didn't know.
When I was 14, I felt very rundown; I had a home to go to, but I felt like I was 60 or something, older than I feel now. And I don't know if it's something that happens at 14, or whether it was adolescence or whether I was gay, or closeted gay, or whatever it was, I felt that.
In high school, I read 'Silas Marner' and I was very attracted to this character - he was very rundown and he'd just stop, and things would happen around him.
I think over the course of 14 films, I'm returning to a place that I know to tell a story... the same way Spielberg returned to fantasy, Lucas returned to the 'Star Wars' saga, or John Ford returned to the western.
I don't usually direct actors in the classic sense of that word. Instead, I try to remind the characters before the shoot what's going on in a very simple way. I then watch them, their inventions as actors, approving or not approving what they're doing.
You're following your track, the story, your only plan, your map for the audience, and all the other stuff is, like, the fun stuff: the costumes, the locations, the set-dressing and the actors. They can all be variable as you like if you stick - however roughly - to the path.
The artist himself is actually the subject in everything after, say, 1900. Eventually, art becomes so removed from the community that you have to know about the artist before you can even look at the painting, because there is a conceptual idea going on.
My department is to get actors to do stuff.
If a movie isn't released, it's one thing, but if you know it will be, it's nice to have closure and see it come out.
Even when you're making a movie about life, death is a presence, and I guess it's part of my dramatic viewpoint. I'm not sure why exactly.
If I'm diagnosed with cancer I might become despondent, but someone young might not, and they might need connections with somebody outside their circle of family because their family is so despondent.
There's always a risk if you don't do things the way you've done things before.
You know, I don't think I had a concept of what I would be or do.
I'm usually trying to react to what the actors are coming up with. And then the environment, and then the story.
I hadn't made a big-budget film, and in Hollywood there's a sort of man and boys situation. You're a man, you make $80 million movies! As if it's harder to make an $80 million movie. Well, I guess businesswise it is because you have more executives to argue with.
The media has gone through lots of things that make it a less foreign thing to have your lead character be gay.
Usually people just hire me.
I mean, I think I'm pretty sentimental.
I think that in some cases, I've made films that have a sentimental quality, at least as part of the film.
My family moved a lot as a kid. We started in Colorado, where I lived for five years. We moved to Chicago for two years, to San Francisco for one year, Connecticut for seven, Oregon for a couple years, and then I went to school.
When you get to be 23, 24 or 25, you start to freeze up and become an adult.
Yeah, I try to be really calm.
I used to take photographs just to remember people.Collection: People
A person's sexuality is so much more than one word "gay." No one refers to anyone as just "hetero" because that doesn't say anything. Sexual identity is broader than a label.Collection: Gay
Sometimes getting upset with yourself is necessary when you face the truth.Collection: Upset
Apparently there’s this kind of songbird that thinks it dies every time the sun goes down. In the morning, when it wakes up, it’s totally shocked to still be alive—so it sings this really beautiful song.Collection: Beautiful
I'm going in a really weird I-don't-know-where direction, but I prefer anything [different] from how standardized filmmaking has become.Collection: Different
You never look at the backside of a mirror because when you do, it'll affect your future because you're looking at yourself backwards. No, you're looking at your inner self and you don't recognize it because you've never seen it before.Collection: Mirrors
I'm a junkie. I like drugs, I like the whole lifestyle, but it just didn't pay off.Collection: Drug
As I do with most films, I try and find some music that you could use throughout, not just a sampling of lots of different artists.Collection: Artist
Narcotics have been systematically scapegoated and demonized. The idea that anyone can use drugs and escape a horrible fate is ananathema to these idiots. I predict that in the near future, right wingers will use drug hysteria as a pretext to set up an international police apparatus.Collection: Fate
Upon entering my vein, the drug would start a warm edge that would surge along until the brain consumed it in a gentle explosion.It began in the back of the neck and rose rapidly until I felt such pleasure that the world sympathizing took on a soft, lofty appeal.Collection: Rose
I have this new theory about films. It's almost like astrology, where if we started on a Tuesday the film will be different than if we started on a Wednesday. Not because of the planets. It's that sometimes you start with the wrong balance and the whole thing gets messed up.Collection: Astrology
Joanna Priestley is one of the most interesting and adept personal animators and filmmakers. I have enjoyed her work for years and been amazed at how she gets into her own thoughts onto the screen in a very elegant and focused way. You have to see this.Collection: Years
If Im diagnosed with cancer I might become despondent, but someone young might not, and they might need connections with somebody outside their circle of family because their family is so despondent.Collection: Cancer
I'm not being analytical. I just create everything intuitively. If you're too analytical, what you're doing probably ends up being too specific.Collection: Ends
No construction stiff working overtime takes more stress and straining than we did just to stay high.Collection: Stress
It's hard to speculate as a human about the afterlife because you're not in it. And it's probably as wild and wacky as you could imagine. The idea that people have figured it out, I'm not sure if I can fathom that.Collection: Ideas
Casting the locals is my primary concern because all the other things you assume will be manageable.Collection: Casting
A lot of times, I relied on connections through my agency, just for financing and things like that. Even when I'm looking for a million and a half dollars to do a small film, there can always be hold-ups, because it's a large amount of money for some people, and it's a small amount of money for other people. In any case, it's significant enough to where you have to jump through a lot of hoops to get it to happen. Sometimes, the people who are helping you can drop the ball. And, of course, the reason agents want you to do bigger projects is that they make a bigger cut.Collection: Cutting
I knew about Heatmiser, and I saw them one time at Pine Street [later changed to La Luna], which was the center of a lot of alternative bands during the 80s. But I didn't really know too much about their music.Collection: Alternatives
I was petrified because all my friends would be going to Washington, DC, to protest. I was sixteen, and I was like, "I don't think I'll be going with you guys," just because I was scared. Then you saw the news, and cops - not students in schools with guns - cops are killing sixteen year old protesters on the news. To me that was more horrifying, to have the authority figures actually killing people on the evening news, than to have another student firing a gun.Collection: School
When you're on a film and you're doubting something, it's usually because you don't think the audience is going to like it.Collection: Thinking
I try to get to know the actors as much as I can. I feel like I'm friends with them for starters and for a week or two, we rehearse when they're getting the costumes together.Collection: Two
Silent is about needing to make a scene shorter by having physical things to cut to. That way, you can manipulate a character to the other side of the room. But, if they say the wrong thing, it might locate that action in a particular part of the scene. It's a mechanical need.Collection: Character
A lot of times, you're not necessarily off the page because you haven't been able to take the time to prepare a character. It's very easy to find even great actors reading it more like a reading. Things aren't really coming alive yet, even though you know they will.Collection: Reading