A Quote by David Lynch

When you make your first film, it's really hard in some ways. You're just nowhere. But then you have something. If you have a success, then you might be looking to take a fall. If you had a fall, you get a certain kind of euphoria because you're not dead, so you can still do it again. It's about how you go through the processes. Do you enjoy that "doing"? Is it getting less fun or more fun?
When I first started looking at Twitter, I followed people like Steve Martin, who will just write the funniest non sequiturs now and then, which I thought was really fun. That's kind of the road I've taken. Every now and then, something comes into your mind and you put it out there. It's very innocuous. I think it's kind of fun.
Your first film is always your best film, in a way. There's something about your first film that you never ever get back to, but you should always try. It's that slight sense of not knowing what you're doing, because the technical skills you learn - especially if you have a film that works, that has some kind of success - are beguiling. The temptation is to use them again, and they're not necessarily good storytelling techniques.
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.
Being on stage is so much fun and enjoyable. Because it’s a lot of fun, we work really hard on music programs and our eyes automatically open up. Because this is where I’m most confident and where I’m at my best, I found a way to enjoy all of it. And I’m still searching for more ways.
Well I liked the mixture actually. It's really good fun to have throughout a shoot to move from something which is quite character based in certain scenes where there's very little action and you're just working with actors and I suppose I've had quite a lot of practice at that. This is more action than I've had a chance to do so that was fun for me too to go into the action then and have some really good crew working with me. And sometimes you get these scenes where they blend.
When you have success on the field, you're more popular and you have that fame that comes with it. You realize you're in the public eye more and you've got to be a little bit more careful about some of the things you're doing out in public and make sure you're smart about the things you say. You're still going to make mistakes from time to time, but you represent an even greater population and people are that much more looking for you to be in the wrong place at the wrong time or fall down or say something really stupid that's going to get you in trouble.
When industry people see something different they don't know what to do with it, so filmmakers who make films about women, they kind of fall through the cracks. If a woman filmmaker makes film about war, like [Kathryn] Bigelow, they say "Okay, this is a war film, it has ninety percent men in it, we know what to do with it." But then she still gets attacked for not doing it properly. [...] But even though it bothers me I don't want to dwell on the sex and gender thing.
I worked as an actor for a few years before anything happened, so I'm used to going up for auditions, and then not getting the role. But sometimes I don't read the book of the film, in case I just totally fall in love with it, and then it just becomes an obsession and you want to do it so much because you've completely fallen in love with the story and the characters. And then, if the part doesn't go your way, it's heartbreaking. So, there's a certain amount of distance you have to keep before you can throw yourself in 100%.
Having that little bit of breathing room to work, and not feeling like it's going to fall apart at any second, has allowed me to recover the feeling I had when I was a little kid, when I was writing stories for fun or drawing pictures for my parents to put on their refrigerator. It was about playing and doing something fun, and kind of making your own little world. And that's how art should feel for me, and how having a little bit more distance between my ass and the ground has helped me.
At the beginning, it is all about fun. I had a lot of fun. But then, when I was 10 years old, more or less, I had a coach who said that I had a strange running style. I was about to leave... I had a decision to take: if I leave or if I stay, but as a goalkeeper.
You try so hard to make something that's fun and exciting, then all anyone wants to talk about is how no-one likes you. It gets very grinding. I had to let the chip I have on my shoulder about that go.
In some ways, the audience becomes complacent when they go to a horror film. And so it's fun to take that attitude and then to upend it.
One piece of advice I have is: Want something else more than success. Success is a lovely thing, but your desire to say something, your worth, and your identity shouldn’t rely on it, because it’s not guaranteed and it’s not permanent and it’s not sufficient. So work hard, fall in love with the writing — the characters, the story, the words, the themes — and make sure that you are who you are regardless of your life circumstances. That way, when the good things come, they don’t warp you, and when the bad things hit you, you don’t fall apart.
My first movie was this independent that I did on the Erie Canal in 1995, called Erie, that I don't know if you could even get, actually with Felicity Huffman. And then from that I did this film that was eventually called The Broken Giant later that fall. And then I kind of started getting into doing pilots.
If you ever have a mistake, you try to just kind of forget about it because if you carry that with you for the rest of the routine, then the rest of your routine might not go as planned. So you just kind of shake it off, and you just continue your routine like you didn't fall.
Since I was from the theater, that's how I learned how to go through the process of being a character. That's how I learned, and that's what I was comfortable doing. And then, the first feature films, I'm sure I was no fun because I did not want to be spontaneous in that filmic way that really can work for you.
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