A Quote by Greg Mottola

In indies, life is very dark and realistic, and in mainstream films, the edges are all rounded off and very sentimentalized. — © Greg Mottola
In indies, life is very dark and realistic, and in mainstream films, the edges are all rounded off and very sentimentalized.
Well, life is dark. We live in a very dark world. When they call them "dark films" it annoys me, because they're very real stories. They're stories I have seen or experienced or witnessed, and coming from that place, that is the hope of humanity.
I'm not able to completely escape naturalism. It's very difficult to escape from naturalism without being too dry. That's what I try to do in my cinema - escape naturalism and do films that are, at the same time, realistic but have a lot of fantasy. It's very difficult in cinema to get away from what life is about, from real life. The way the actors work has to be realistic - you can't do Baroque acting - so it's very complicated. And, we're human beings, so we're not perfect. I'm trying to do something different.
I never wanted to be well-rounded. I do not admire well-rounded people nor their work. So far as I can see, nothing good in the world has ever been done by well-rounded people. The good work is done by people with jagged, broken edges, because those edges cut things and leave an imprint, a design.
When I was at art school we used to make films, and we had a really very realistic manikin that we threw off a bridge, and a car nearly crashed. We all had to clear off really quickly.
North-east films are still not on a national level. But 'Axone' is a mainstream film. I found the script very authentic and also very funny.
A big part of the humor is in identifying with the tragic elements of the film. The New Zealand sense of humor is very dark. Our films are usually very dark and it's always someone being killed. Usually a child.
I found that I could write two kinds of short stories: I could write very absurd, kind of surrealistic, funny stories; or I could write very dark, realistic - hyper-realistic - stories. I was never happy with that, because I couldn't meld the two.
I don't like my language watered down, I don't like my edges rounded off.
Americans are very enthusiastic. We have a new generation of moviegoers who love great horror films. I am a very imaginative man, and for me, it's easy to speak with my dark side. I have very beautiful, interesting nightmares.
I'm very fortunate. I have a wonderful family, lots of hobbies and athletic pursuits. I always wanted to have a very well-rounded life.
I've been working very hard off-off-off-off-off-off-off Broadway and doing little films and really sweating my butt off in tiny little black boxes.
I tend to avoid melodrama. I try to create very realistic settings and very realistic experiences and realistic responses to these experiences. Melodrama is the use of really big events that may or may not happen in real life - certainly they do, but they're not events that are common to most people. Most of the things that happen in my novels are things that could happen to people in real life.
Of course, there's always one theater that shows some kind of European film. Now, fortunately, you have DVDs, so it's possible to get anything you want within a few hours. In those days, it was virtually impossible to get Italian films, or German films, or whatever. So I grew up with very standard, mainstream films.
Fine-art photography is a very small world associated with galleries, museums, and university art programs. It's not like rock music; the products of this world have never been widely seen because the artists are often exploring things that are not already coded in general consciousness. It's not that photographers don't want to be famous, it's just that very few of the views from the edges of culture make the mainstream. Ansel Adams was an exception.
I'm a very optimistic person, woman, mother and singer. And at the same time, I'm very realistic when I look at other aspects of my life.
I can't dance like Hrithik Roshan. I don't have the necessary glamour like some of the other actors do. They are able to sell themselves on that aspect. I do roles and films which are very realistic. So, in those films, if you don't get into the skin of it, they won't look convincing.
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!