Top 153 Quotes & Sayings by Cary Fukunaga - Page 2

My dad is from Japanese descent, my mom is from Swedish descent and, through marriages and divorces, a pretty multicultural family - a lot of Spanish speakers in the family.

I think the only reason people use PCs is because they have to. Mac is the most streamlined computer there is. I started using the Mac in college because I was doing editing, and they were the only computers we could use to do that.

On 'Sin Nombre,' Adriano Goldman and I improvised a lot of things on-site. We were working with untrained actors, and you can't really block a scene in a traditional way.

I'll definitely say that, before film school, I didn't have much of a film-history background. I didn't know much about classic cinema.

I'm not Mexican, and I'm not Central American. I'm from California.

I have these plants in my house that are dying, so having a robot butler to water them when I'm away would be pretty handy.

'Sin Nombre' was almost like the adolescent version of 'Jane Eyre.' 'Jane Eyre' sort of picks up where 'Sin Nombre' ends. It's about this girl who starts off on her own at her lowest point of despair, and she figures out how she got there.

Casting directors I don't think are the best in Mexico at street casting. Whereas, I think, in New York and in L.A., that's more common; not so in Mexico. So it's up to you as a director in a lot of ways to go out and do that.

I'm never more miserable than when I write, and never more happy than having finished and having it sitting in front of me.

Ed Norton is probably one of the smartest people I've ever met.

I want to have a nice country home one day, yeah.

Going from having an Atari to a laptop changed everything. It allows me to work anywhere I want and send my work home - I can work anywhere in the world.

I'm not a very sentimental person, so you're not going to find schmaltzy scenes in my movies.

There are elements to the 19th century which just don't work for contemporary audiences.

I was a big history buff as a teenager.

I'm better suited to be a director, I think. I see myself as the general author. I hate the word 'auteur,' because it sounds so solitary when filmmaking is anything but solitary.

I binge write, basically. I do a lot of prep, research, setup. I'll have a pretty detailed outline. Sort of like a beat outline. And then I'll add little notes and dialogue ideas, and I'll just create a 20-page document.

I think about a Richard Avedon photo series, the kind of faces he gets of real people, which I find so captivating. Fellini was also great in filling his films with this ambiance, this environment, sometimes chaotic and carnival-like, but people's faces were always amazing.

I don't believe happiness comes out of material gain, for sure.

I think any character has to be well-rounded, whether they are male or female - they have to be complex and make choices that maybe we don't agree with, you know? I guess that's what makes them human.

Literally, I don't have a television. So I don't really know what's happening pop-culturally. I read the 'New York Times.' And there's one worldwide cabin blog that I look at.

It's hard because there's a part of me that wants 'True Detective' to win every award we're nominated for. But I'm a huge fan of 'Breaking Bad' and 'Game of Thrones.'

I used to do Civil War re-enacting between the ages of 15 and 19. I was part of a unit that was considered very authentic. We would source the right wools, the right buttons for the costumes. We had the right look.

I think I have this field around me that makes electronics work bad. It's not like an entropy thing; it happens very quickly.

'City of God' and 'Slumdog Millionaire' are both films that I really like, but they are stylistically the opposite of what I wanted to do.

There's nothing I find more lazy than unmotivated camerawork just to make things look interesting.

One of my problems with a lot of things I watch is that everybody's too pretty, and it takes me out of the film because I'm thinking that all these people look like I've seen them in a cafe in Los Angeles.

I've certainly never been dying to go to England my entire life.

It's a treat and daunting to be directing someone like Judi Dench, who's made more films than I'll ever make in my lifetime.

Shakespeare is repeated around the world in different languages, just because it's good storytelling.

I eventually want to do writing on all the films, but not necessarily to be the writer. Writing is a painful, painful thing; it really is.

Every single substitute teacher growing up could not pronounce my name, so whenever someone pauses, I'm like, 'Oh, that's me.'

It's so easy for shows to be gritty and handheld and shaky and really tight in people's faces.

To do action without cuts is infinitely more exciting.

I have a really good relationship with Focus Features; we had a wonderful time working together on 'Sin Nombre.'

I don't really put trophies out. I don't keep trophies around my apartment.

I'm clearly not meant to be in front of the camera. I'm really not meant for anything but behind the camera.

I like characters that make choices and try to drive their own fate.

Collaboration sometimes causes conflict, and sometimes it's easy, but the bringing together of great minds only adds.

My mind is in so many different places while we're shooting. Part of it is watching the performance, part of it is watching the camera, and part of it is thinking about the stuff that we have to get that day. It's always a pleasure watching, but you also take it for granted, when you're on the actual grind, making the show.

I'm pretty hard to impress, and I'm pretty exacting, in terms of what I want from my props department and art department. We spend many, many hours going over visual research and finding the right artists to create the material.

They're always surprised with what I want to do and don't want to do. I think they're surprised I don't want to do robo-tech. I don't know, it's like they want me to have a long career. And be prolific and make big movies.

I want to be happy while I make movies and not just do things just to work. I want to do things I spend years on.

Getting back in the directors chair - there's a sense of like doing something every year. It's not like riding a bike, you're always learning new things, you're gonna face new challenges and when you face new challenges you'll have an answer for them.

You only have so much time in life so everything you do needs to mean something to you.

I've never watched my films with an everyday audience so it was really crazy to watch people clap at the end of my film - with no one there, no actors, no people from the film. It was just a spontaneous reaction, so I thought that was probably the best compliment you could get from an audience.

I'm the kind of person where you're never done, you just keep perfecting and perfecting and perfecting, or trying to fix things that drive you crazy. Often times when you watch a film, "if I could just get through this minute, I'll be fine." So I think I'm just hard on myself.

When you know you have a certain amount of work to finish, you just don't allow yourself to get sick again.

There's nothing better than finishing something and looking at it. Whether it be a script or a movie, it's this complete little thing that now exists and is hopefully immortal.

You have to tease enough misinformation and lack of information to hopefully make people want more.

I've been wanting to make a movie about the war in Sierra Leone, specifically, for more than 15 years.

If you really want to tell someone you love them, you don't just go and blurt it out. There's a dance. And your movie does that.

The apartments are made for eels.

A period romance film with elements of horror. That was successful, because I feel like Coppola's DRACULA was one or the other. You know? It was never scary it was never a film he got invested in the romance of the characters. He understood it, but he never got invested. So it as a challenge for me to see if I could do that, I still don't know how audiences will sort of react to that.

Levity, you need levity to feel anything. You need to laugh before you cry. I think films that take themselves too seriously without any levity are missing an important ingredient to the potential emotional impact of their stories.

You're always against the clock. But really just fighting for quality.

It's an important part of being a member of society to know what's happening in the world and to know where you fall in it and what you can do about it.

Even on my films, I always collaborate with the actors. That's a given. I think you need that. You need the actors to feel as much ownership of the performance and the direction of the story as you do, to get the most out of everyone's potential.

I think it's a fascinating thing to see how lonely people are in this world and what they're looking for. It's a universal concept. So, it's something that interests me and I'll probably revisit it if I get the chance to do the child soldier film because I think it's one of the most important scripts I've written. It's just too dark to do as a film right now. I need to do something a bit different.

If you have something really important you want to say, you have to read your audience, I guess.