A Quote by James Gray
The life of a film is very strange. Once the film is done, you wish you could forget about it and move on.
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When you're making a film, you don't really have time to consider what the whole of your film is. And then, when you're releasing your film and promoting your film, you're looking at it in a different way. Then, as you move away from it, you start to look at it objectively and think, 'What could I have done better?'
I left film because I felt that photography was my art. It was something I could do on my own, whereas film was so collaborative. I thought as a photographer I could make something that was artistic and that was mine, and I liked that. And it wasn't until I got back into film and I have very small crews and I could do very tiny filmmaking that wasn't 100 people that I still felt that I was making something artistic as a filmmaker. So, you know, I'm an artist, and whether it's photography or film, I want my voice to be there and I think my voice is very strong in this film.
There's two aspects of film crafting that I'm very strict about, and that's how I move my camera and where I cut the film.
When you do a normal film, you play the character for three months and you say goodbye to him. And then, when you watch the movie, you say, "I wish I could have done that differently. I wish I could have added this to it."
It makes it very easy. I have a beginning, middle, and end, and I don't film for long - about 20 hours usually for a two-hour film - so it's easily watchable in a week for me and the editor. Once I know who the characters are, I only film those characters, unless somebody else forces their way into the film by a scene happening to them or we meet them by chance.
Once I am done with the film, I don't worry about how many centres the film has released, what are the BO records, etc. As I have no knowledge of such things, feeling the pressure doesn't arise.
It's far easier to write why something is terrible than why it's good. If you're reviewing a film and you decide "This is a movie I don't like," basically you can take every element of the film and find the obvious flaw, or argue that it seems ridiculous, or like a parody of itself, or that it's not as good as something similar that was done in a previous film. What's hard to do is describe why you like something. Because ultimately, the reason things move people is very amorphous. You can be cerebral about things you hate, but most of the things you like tend to be very emotive.
Um, 'Soul Food'... Another wonderful little movie that could. Here's a film that, I think our budget was maybe $6 million. We shot it in Chicago in six weeks. I was so proud of the film, because it showed America that an African-American film about family could sell, could do well, could cross over and have true meaning.
All my movies are about strange worlds that you can't go into unless you build them and film them. That's what's so important about film to me. I just like going into strange worlds.
I really discovered [Dr.Strange] through hearing about this film and first meeting Scott [Derrickson] and getting into it and just opening up and saying, "Okay, this is, like all comics, very much of its era," and my first question was, 'How do you make this film? Why do you make this film now?' and the answers were so enticing that I was like, "I'm in."
I've done very well in the film business. Whenever I have wanted something, the film business has given it to me. I'm very fortunate. My big problem in life has always been, 'What do I want?'
[This kind of strange mythology about me.] I've pulled a huge steamboat over a mountain; I've done a feature film with all the actors acting under hypnosis - things that are very unusual.
Close-Up is a very particular film in my oeuvre. It's a film that was made in a very particular way; mainly because I didn't really have the time to think about how to go about making the film.
In fact, sometimes when a short film is done well, you wish that it could be slightly longer.
I turned down a film that was offered to me in the very early '80s, a Scorsese film. That probably wasn't a good career move.
I wish I'd done 'Dumb and Dumber.' I was offered the part, but I don't think I'd have been better than Jeff Daniels was. Another film I wish I'd done was 'Jerry Maguire.'
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