A Quote by David Gordon Green

Sundance [festival] is all your Hollywood buds and buddies and rolling out and high-fiving and "Hell, yeah. Here comes the movie," and in Venice, it's very elegant, and respectful...It's decadence. It's such a fun way to formalize a movie that is for us a down-and-dirty, gritty movie. And to see it with the red carpet, and rolling up in a Maserati.
Walking down the red carpet, suddenly I felt very special and different. All the flashlights from cameras and requesting voices from the media, the scene, it was just like what I remembered seeing on TV or a movie when I was a little girl - the scene only when movie stars appeared.
Directors typically have three choices - you do a studio movie and get a paycheck up front, you do an independent movie, which is for your heart and you don't get paid up front and probably don't make any money on it, but it hopefully goes to Sundance and is more of an art movie, and then you do TV.
You could say that Iron Man was a second-tier character, and it turned out very successfully. I simply think it's down to the movie itself, and whether people enjoy the movie, are involved in the movie, and that it entertains them. From that point of view, the movie has to stand alone.
People always ask me if I hate the nuns. Do I make my movies extra dirty to piss them off? I always say no, that's not the point. To a Catholic, a movie is only dirty if it makes you want to have sex more. If it makes you feel sick, disgusted, ashamed of your own body, then it's not a dirty movie at all. It's a Catholic movie. And I make very Catholic movies.
Look, I like gritty. I write gritty. There is a time and a place for gritty. I'll take my Batman gritty, thank you, and I will acknowledge that such a portrayal means that my 11-year-old has to wait before he sees The Dark Knight. But if Hollywood turns out a Superman movie that I can't take him to? They've done something wrong.
In editing, you really face what the movie is. When you shoot it, you have this illusion that you're making the masterpieces that you're inspired by. But when you finally edit the movie, the movie is just a movie, so there is always a hint of disappointment, particularly when you see your first cut.
I've ended up as a filmmaker who really loves the movie part of movies. That time in my life was a big influence on the kind of movies that I ended up making. I always think I'm going to make a movie that's gritty and real, but then I make a movie that's like an opera. I fight it at first and then that's just the way it is.
It's a mistake to just go make a movie where the whole thing is talking down to the kids like, "Ok, we gotta bring the IQ of this movie down because it's a kids movie" You don't have to do that, kids can laugh and parents can laugh at different parts and that's fun, and you see that with all of the great kids movies.
I tell everybody on the first day of making a movie that if anyone's here to further their career, they should leave. I'm gonna make the movie in such a way that we won't have a career when this movie comes out. Because the people who hold the moneybags are not going to want to share any of that money with us to make the next movie!
When I was working for Miramax, before Sundance, a videotape of 'The Blair Witch Project' - of the full, completed movie - went to a lot of the buyers. And so we all saw it before the festival, and I passed, a bunch of people passed... Then I watched the movie marching toward success, and was reminded by my bosses what a dope I was.
The first time I went to the Oscars was surreal. It wasn't really me walking the red carpet. It was like watching a movie of a Hollywood premiere. You have to have an intellectual distance from it, because it's so atypical from your everyday life.
I do not proactively approach Hollywood, but also I do not always turn down offers. But since I'm living as a movie director, I have a desire to shoot something like 'This is a Hollywood movie!' at least once in my lifetime.
People don't realize that doing a horror movie is hard work. You're out there all day screaming your lungs out, breathing in toxic make-up fumes, rolling around in the dirt, getting your eyebrows burned off - it's not like doing a sitcom.
I like films about people who figured out what they believed and had the guts to act on it in a way that added value to others. So, there are lots of movies that have characters who did that. I'll pick an odd one - Stranger Than Fiction because I really liked the movie - particularly the offbeat cookie maker. You'll have to see the movie to see what I mean. The movie also reinforces that you can be the author of your own script.
I put in all the dirty words. It works really well. The thing that we found with 'Drive Angry,' more than anything else is that we wrote the movie that we wanted to see. I've done that before. I've wanted to see 'Jason X'. It did not become the movie that I thought it would be. That happens. It's happened with every movie I've ever done.
'Room' was a very dark movie, but 'Wonder' is a fun, light movie that sends out an important message. There is a big difference.
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