Top 19 Quotes & Sayings by Quentin Dupieux

I've been obsessed with making movies since I was 15. I watched a lot of movies when I was young, and I decided that I wanted to do that because I was a passionate kid about watching movies.

A real good artist is basically a grown-up kid, who never kills the kid. What we call being an adult is basically about killing the kid. People think you have to forget about the kid to become an adult and deal with grown-up problems. But, that's bullshit. We are still kids. It's the same, you just grow up. You're a kid with more experience.

It depends on the way you shoot it. It's something I don't really control. The main goal is to make a funny movie, but then I let my mind go. I get lost sometimes in the writing, trying to find some special zones. That's the excitement of making a movie.

So many people are killing their childhood. It's like, "Okay, today I've decided I'm gonna be a grown-up, and I'm not a kid anymore." But, that's bullshit. You're still a kid. It makes no sense to kill the kid.

I really think that life isn't logical and life isn't always meaningful. I'm just trying to go into that zone without being too random, and just trying to create some new logic [in moviemaking] that feels like dreams.

Around age 18, I decided to start writing my own stuff. I wrote some bad short films and shot them. I tried to make them better and better. I slowly learned how to make movies, and I think I'm still learning.

When you watch an audience watching my movies, you realize that nobody laughs at the same time. Some people enjoy a beat, and then another group of people are laughing at a sight gag, and then someone laughs where nobody laughs before. They're not timed like a comedy. You're not supposed to laugh at every joke. You decide.

I want to be someone who is doing something solid. And I am doing my thing. You can like it or not, but I know that now I have a really nice group of really cool and talented actors that follow me. It's the same for them. They have a special connection with my movies because we do these movies differently.

To me, the movie is more funny if, at the same time, you can think a little bit or dream a little bit.

When I'm on the set, I take five minutes to find the best angle for a scene, and then we just shoot it and it looks exactly what you see on screen because I don't touch it afterwards. I never think about it, before being on the set. That's my thing. I love to be stuck.

That's what happens with most comedies. If you watch 10 minutes and there's no joke, then you're disappointed because you're expecting jokes. The same goes for emotional movies. You have to feel something. If you don't feel anything for 10 minutes, you get bored.

If you lost the love of your life, that's a nightmare.

It [moviemaking] is like a dream. When you're dreaming, you make some very strange connections between some random stuff and random people.

I'm just trying to find some secret places in the human brain because I think movies tend to be too rational sometimes. Everything is supposed to make sense. Everything is supposed to be logical.

I don't like to be on a set and wait three hours, just to make some lighting adjustments. I like to shoot. That's what I want to do. I'd rather shoot something dumb than wait.

Yeah, the main goal when I'm writing [movie scripts] is to entertain myself. It's supposed to be funny, but then a funny idea can be turned into something else.

I always try to be different. I always want to surprise myself.

On the set, everybody is different, so you have to deal with different sensibilities. I don't have a method. Usually, I try to have a good connection with the actor that I'm filming. Even a guy who's there with two lines of dialogue, I always try to have a connection with the guy I'm filming, just to make it into a nice, enjoyable moment.

I'm a small filmmaker, making my small, low-budget movies, but I'm super lucky to know that everybody reacts differently to my movies. That's interesting.