A Quote by Christopher Nolan
Yeah, it's odd when you look back at your own work. Some filmmakers don't look back at their work at all. I look at my work a lot, actually. I feel like I learned something while looking at stuff I've done in terms of what I'm going to do in the future, mistakes I've made and things at work or what have you.
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When you look at Banksy's work as a catalogue of ideas, it's undeniably brilliant. Going back to my days doing stencil work back in the 80s I knew that it wasn't exactly the most demanding work: it's like printing, but then Warhol was a printer.
I look back on my life like everybody does but not just career. I mean I look back on my life as a whole, so I don't think that I dwell there or anything and in terms of work I hope that there is a lot in front of me.
You just have to keep trying to do good work, and hope that it leads to more good work. I want to look back on my career and be proud of the work, and be proud that I tried everything. Yes, I want to look back and know that I was terrible at a variety of things.
I don't keep up with the art world. It's out there and if I did that too much, I wouldn't get my own work done. So I look at it every so often, "Oh, yeah, oh, okay," and go back to work. Life isn't that long. You got to do what you can when you have it.
Looking back, I have to say that I've been fortunate to work with a lot of great people. Unfortunately, a lot of them are gone. But I look back and, yeah, I have had a really great career!
The only thing I collect is art. I collect it because I like looking at it. A lot of it is really personal stuff that my friends have made, paintings that my husband's mother made, and things that I bought. I buy abstract art on eBay, and I buy some outsider art on eBay, or what is called folk art, I buy a lot of. I have a lot of professional art work as well as more stuff my friends' kids make. To have a wall of art to look at, I feel really surrounded by love, because so much of the work is related to my friendships.
We don't have to look back at da Vinci's work and Albert Einstein's work and Mozart's work. We're actually living in the time period that David Lynch is creating his art. We're so lucky.
I like to make things. When you make something, you work it and you work it until it's done, and then you say 'Look, here's what I made.'
When you organize your work and look back at your entire production, it may feel like you're looking at a straight line, but in fact it's nothing like that. The work is very experimental and most of the time it develops like branches. I usually see a capillary, like a tree shape where there are... branches that sort of move because you're not tending to them.
When you look back on a historical period of music, it seems so obvious to you what the characteristics of it are, but they're not obvious at the time. So, when I look back at my own work, I could easily write a very convincing sort of account of it that made it look like I had planned it all out from day one and that this led logically to that and then I did this and then that followed quite naturally from that. But that's not how it felt.
I look at technology a lot because I feel like it's something we've got to stop and question, ya know? Right now it's sort of running ahead unabated and I feel like we've got to look at it and say 'Ok, I've gained all of these conveniences, but what did I lose?' And that to me is all part of the same idea of man-made work. We literally worship the things that we've made with our own hands. That's as old as mankind, that problem.
All the lawyers and the business stuff is work, but actually creating stuff isn't work. It's good effort. It's hard work. But, it's not work. It doesn't feel like work because the result is very rewarding.
I look at some of my work and say, "Oh, that's where I can be better." I want to continue to grow and do things that do scare me. I want to work with filmmakers who will help me go deeper in my work.
What really matters is the work. And what matters to me is doing the work. I'm not looking at the back end: "What am I going to get out of this? What's going to be the reward?" I'm just looking at the work, the pleasure of being able to do the work. And that's what the fun is: To climb up the mountain is the fun, not standing at the top. There's nowhere to go. But climbing up, that struggle, that to me is where the fun is. That to me is the thrill. But once that's over, that's kind of it. I don't look too much beyond that.
The bad news is, I have worked less than I have liked. The good news is, I can look back on my body of work and feel truly proud of the work I have done.
But you have to look at your work with an honest critical eye. Work on the things that you need work on. Scare yourself. Surprise yourself. If you don't like the way it's going, you have complete control over changing the course. That's one of the best things about doing this.
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