Peter Weir
Movies tie things up in an arbitrary length of time, but I have always liked things that aren't fully realised.Collection: Movies
There's almost a fear that if you understood too deeply the way you arrived at choices, you could become self-conscious. In any case, many ideas which are full of personal meaning seem rather banal when you put words to them.
There was a point of frustration, where I thought I should just take a film, even though I didn't want to. I was impatient with being at home. But I hung on to the approach I've always had, which is to wait for a project that I could contribute something unique to.
Normally as a director, you do look at other films and things that are relevant. But with this film, it became impossible because I became so aware of the camera placement.
The best conversation with Stanley Kubrick is a silent one: you sit in a theatre and watch his films and you learn so much.
It was immediately apparent that it was full of tricky ingredients to balance. In fact, I found it very intriguing. What held me back from saying yes to the producer was that I wasn't sure who could play Truman.
Well, all these stars have their houses swept quite regularly by people who work in the surveillance security business. They come in and they look for bugs and things.
Well, there's that girl on the Internet - although this isn't an example of someone who doesn't know they're on - but there's a girl on the Internet who posts one photograph every two minutes from her bedroom.
I'd love to have another film to go on to. I'm in the mood to work. But I have to be patient, you know, to find that particular kind of project. Occasionally I'll write one myself if I can summon up the energy.
National film industries tend to move in cycles. In Australia right now, we're on a high, a feeling of potential, which as yet shows no sign of flagging. But the word 'industry' is misleading. A small national cinema has no industry in the Hollywood sense.
I've become wary of interviews in which you're forced to go back over the reasons why you made certain decisions. You tend to rationalize what you've done, to intellectually review a process that is often intuitive.
Music stops you from thinking.
When I began making films, they were just movies: 'What's the new movie? What are you doing?' Now they're called 'adult dramas.'
You can mix in certain sensitivities as a filmmaker.
I loved Sherlock Holmes as a kid, but I remember being disappointed when he'd come up with these simple explanations for these complex mysteries.
I carve stone. I've got hammers and chisels and I carve from sandstone. I just did a big mural of birds and trees.
I enjoyed Jonathan Franzen's 'Freedom.' Would I make that into a film? I think it's better suited to television. That would very much be a dialogue and performance piece, and it would take some very skilful direction - but not my kind of directing. But I thought it was a real literary work.
I'm not from a theatrical background where people do like to work it out on some stage space.
With more time I like to see the actors find something of their own places, so I can get their own ideas before I put mine in. Given they have a better idea more often enough.
Silent films were, I think, more different than we know to sound films. We think of it as simply that we added dialogue and in actual fact I think it was an entirely different art form.
The smallest detail can contribute to the whole, I think particularly with emotion, you want it to be as authentic as it can, whether its a artifact or a theatrical event. But the whole is the sum of so many images.Collection: Thinking
If I can't make the kind of film that I want to make, then the hell with it.Collection: Kind
I always thought the editor should cut the film and so I'll come in and look at the movie. Just because that's the only way I can really see the ideas of the editor, it's really working together. Yes it's a hierarchy, yes I'm the boss, but I like to see and to think about the idea, and it's about us asking, 'do we have to say that?' and, 'how do we make it there?' So it's advising the editor, it's very give and take, it's very free, but in the end, it's wonderful once you get through the first couple of cuts.Collection: Couple
It doesn't take any imagination at all to feel awedCollection: Imagination
I love stories and I don't like to repeat myself. And I look for new stuff, and as they say it gets harder.Collection: Love Story
With war and famine and flood and special effects films, when you do somebody under duress, you have to be really be inventive and the risk of keeping it very simple is you might loose some of the audience because it's not overt, it's hidden, not coming at you. Then you might cut through to some of this numbness and reach something profound and tragic.Collection: War
It's spiritual, a man that has a past and regrets, but you can as a director take a shot, and there's something in the eyes and the face, you just can't fake it, you can't teach it, and I think Ed Harris has that quality.Collection: Spiritual
I became obsessed with the true stuff, and that led to shaping 'The Way Back' screenplay somewhat toward a minimalist style, to avoid free-hanging moments, and to hold the music back, so it would never lead you to an emotion, and to try to make the emotions as real as I could.Collection: Real
There's such a deep, conservative feeling in 'The way Back.' You go, 'gosh, we've gotten narrow.' So at the moment I think there's a kind of tension, and it's gold rush fever.Collection: Thinking
In terms of how I work with actors, having worked so heavily on the script I have a very clear idea of the characters; they are reasonably well illustrated in the script. If you cast it right, to a great degree you can hand it over to the actor and I just make suggestions. I'm not the kind of director who needs or wants to get into too much finessing. Ideally, when you hit the set, you have this conversation, like, 'eh, what did you think?' 'I don't know, what did you think?' 'Why don't we just try it again, make a few physical changes.'Collection: Character
So much of the work is intuitive. The resistance you detect is just that, a kind of evasion, a sense that too much analysis will inhibit creativity.Collection: Creativity
Ed Harris seemed to be as a man, it seems, like a Clint Eastwood, this country is one that has produced more than one of this kind of man that's iconic and enormously appealing to the world, as part of American film culture.Collection: Country
I love a chance to shoot real locations, because in films in the earlier days before people traveled as much, it was exotic to see a film set in Switzerland, and that area has been taken over by CGI, mostly, and fantasy landscapes. It's unusual to see this much landscape, people say it's old fashioned. So what you're referring to is there was that period in the '50s and '60s when there were epics and you saw landscape.Collection: Real
I don't know if there will ever be an ideal way of selling an original picture. Because everything you're doing, you're inventing.Collection: Doing You
Anybody I'd spoken to who'd been in Siberia said 'would you please put mosquitos in your film,' that's what everybody knows about, they're big and they're nasty.Collection: Nasty
Various studios are still shooting on film with digital grain and the DI negatives, it's not ideal. We should really be all film or all digital. But that being said, the old way of graining in the camera, now you can make changes like a painter. It's dangerous because you can ruin the film, you can over-fiddle. We've all seen films and gone 'what the hell is that?'Collection: Film
Id love to have another film to go on to. Im in the mood to work. But I have to be patient, you know, to find that particular kind of project. Occasionally Ill write one myself if I can summon up the energy.Collection: Writing
Casting the right actor for the right part is some unspoken thing between the two of you to communicate.Collection: Communicate
National film industries tend to move in cycles. In Australia right now, we're on a high, a feeling of potential, which as yet shows no sign of flagging. But the word "industry" is misleading. A small national cinema has no industry in the Hollywood sense.Collection: Moving
Russell Crowe as Capt. Jack Aubrey in Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, .. most unlikely.Collection: World
You get very little from the studios anymore, it's all independent. And I think the studio, with the exception of something like The Social Network, a fine film, very interesting, but as for studio pictures, that's it, what else? There was more only a few years ago. So it changes, and I'm trying as much as I can.Collection: Independent
Studios are attracted by making money, and they're also trying to simplify things, going with the genre thing. The gambling instincts of a few years ago where you might make some thousands or a few hundred, it's nothing now.Collection: Trying
I think Ed Harris is a conscious screen actor, so I think it was strong, it was like he put everything together somehow in 'The Way Back'. He likes, I don't want to say the method approach, because that's not really necessarily his way of working, but it was easy to do because of the location. He'd go off by himself, and they would make things.Collection: Strong
I'm not from a theatre background, I'm wary of rehearsals. But what I do like is hanging out together, on location.Collection: Theatre
Casting is always critical but in this case, 'The Way Back', I was looking internationally to a degree for an interesting mix of gentlemen, Irish, Polish, Russian and American. Not many people had the qualifications, people who would play the game, particular to this industry. So I had to research amongst the cast. They had to be very very prepared as we had to start shooting as soon as we could, there wasn't any time to talk, and there would only be three or four takes.Collection: People
I had always been wary of doing any autobiographical movies, truly feeling at home with fiction.Collection: Home
In 'The Way Back' survivors were all ordinary people, and that's the whole point, that's who I felt these people should be, and they shouldn't be that hero that stands out.Collection: Hero
I've done a number of things that get categories closed off in a way, so when I read 'The Long Walk' by Slavomir Rawicz and decided to do film, 'I thought, you know, this is going to be wonderful,' two and a half years, three years, whatever it was.Collection: Long