You're learning the whole time. Halfway through a movie, you've got a lot of ideas, a lot of things that maybe you've learned and that you then wish you could apply, but you can't. You just have to finish the movie in that world that you're in. Maybe what you've learned you can apply somewhere else.
I did a lot of prep for 'Rogue One' while I was working on 'Lion,' so I could take the skills I learned in India and apply them to 'Rogue' and then take the skills I learned on 'Rogue' and apply it to 'Lion.'
I saw how you could get away with such a free-spirited, naturalistic sensibility in a mainstream Hollywood movie, and you could apply a lot of the skills of the '70s icons that I really admire to a contemporary, commercial movie.
One of the most telling things about film school is you've got a lot of students wandering around saying, "Oh, I wish I could make a movie. I wish I could make a movie."
After making a movie, maybe you weren't able to shoot many of your ideas, because a movie is only 1 1/2 or two hours long, but TV gives you space to film a lot of things.
I learned early on that it's heartbreaking to - there's the editor that comes in, and then they have to craft the movie together, and sometimes you give a whole performance that's just been cut up, and maybe it's better for it, absolutely, but you still have to deal with the loss of that.
I learned my business in the theater and in television, particularly working with the actors. You can learn much more in the theater than directing a movie, because then you have no time when you are shooting a movie to really work with the actors. You have to learn this craft somewhere else.
I've learned mainly by reading myself. So I don't think I have any original ideas. Certainly, I talk about reading Graham. I've read Phil Fisher. So I've gotten a lot of my ideas from reading. You can learn a lot from other people. In fact, I think if you learn basically from other people, you don't have to get too many new ideas on your own. You can just apply the best of what you see.
When you do a movie, you shoot, and then you go away. A lot of the times you walk about from the movie, you say, 'Oh, I get that scene now... Oh, that whole ending - I wish I could have done another shot.'
I was wondering if any of my faith was real at all, and I started to let go of a lot of things that I had learned and say, 'Maybe I just need to start over entirely with what I have learned about my faith.' And that's what I did.
'Red Planet' was a tough movie to make, and I learned a lot about myself. To me, that's a lot more interesting than how a movie does.
Learn a lot about the world and finish things, even if it is just a short story. Finish it before you start something else. Finish it before you start rewriting it. That's really important.
It's to find out if you're going to be a writer or not, because that's one of the most important lessons.
Most, maybe 90% of people, will start writing and never finish what they started. If you want to be a writer that's the hardest and most important lesson: Finish it. Then go back to fix it.
Maybe it didn’t matter if you were a world-famous heartthrob or a painful geek. Maybe it didn’t matter if you friend was possibly dying. Maybe you just got through it. Maybe that was all you could ask for.
I learned a lot from that first record and I learned a lot from my experiences touring, but really the biggest education I got over the past two years was learning the importance of arrangements.
I'd say I learned a lot. It's all about whether or not I can apply it.
If a kid is really interested in wanting to have a career in aviation, he's actually learning and getting some of the [basics], not even just fringe. There are things in here that movie [Planes] about like the pulp of an engine, and it's the actual engine, the actual parts and pieces. So I felt like I got schooled as well. I learned a lot just being in there and doing that.
But then when I'm in a halfway successful movie, it irritates the hell out of the critics in New York, because they'd like to kill my pictures if they could. So maybe I'm pretty good in the movie. Then they use all these words like I'm 'surprisingly' good, or 'shockingly enough,' I'm good. It's like I crawled out from under a magazine and they're surprised I can act.