A Quote by James Wan

I think, when you're a director, you get sucked into your project whether you like it or not, right? — © James Wan
I think, when you're a director, you get sucked into your project whether you like it or not, right?
You have to get the casting right. You have to get the people behind it. Your director might not be the right director for the project. And then, it has to test and those people in that room, wherever they are, have to turn those buttons the right way at the right time.
I think each character is different for me, but I am a director's actor. So if I get the right vision and right guidance from my director, I think sky is the limit for me.
You try to work with the director and your fellow actors to get somewhere, but other people are the judge of whether you hit that note right.
It's only when a project or film doesn't work, that you think about what you could have done differently - whether you chose unwisely, or was there something in your application in that role, as an actor, as a director or as a producer, that you could have done better.
A bad audition is usually the director's fault, not the actor's. It's up to the director to get the atmosphere right to get the best out of your auditionees.
You really get a feeling, when you're reading scripts, pretty quickly. Within 20 or 25 pages, you can get a sense of the part. I always think about whether I'm right for it and whether I can do it. If I don't think I'm right for it, it should go to somebody else.
A big thing for me is trusting the director, so I don't need to watch playback. I feel like the director is gonna tell me whether it's right or not.
I'm working on a few different films and I'm just searching for the right new story to tell. As a director, you just have to kind of like just get through the first project before starting on the next one.
But I think it’s important to discuss just how easy it is for any of us to get caught up in things that might seem unthinkable—to get sucked into the wrong environment and make moral compromises that can tarnish us terribly. We like to think that we change our environment, but the truth is that it changes us. So we have to be extraordinarily careful to choose the right environment—to work with, and even socialize with, the right people. Ideally, we should stick close to people who are better than us so that we can become more like them.
We must not forget either that some of the system's resilience is due to its ability to coopt people with money and prestige. It is easy to get sucked right in. Those who grasp the system are also likely to be talented and capable of doing well within the system. Who will turn down a lot of money? Who doesn't have an ego? A compromise here, another one there, and pretty soon, you are sucked right in.
I think as a director you have to make it your own. It'd be a mistake to approach a project with the idea of 'I'm going to do this the way I think somebody else would,' because then you'd never be clear on your idea.
From my side, I don't put pressure on the director to cater to a certain image. I am happy to do different films, and I have to stick by my director. I like to completely surrender myself to the director - that way, I think, I don't get to do the similar roles.
The difference between deafness and any other disability is that there is no way to put yourself in a position of knowing what it would be like because you can't stop yourself from hearing your own breath or your own heartbeat. You can not remove sound entirely from your life. You can get a sense of what being blind is like by closing and covering your eyes which provides a source of empathy because we can all project ourselves to that. But people who think they can project themselves into deafness are mistaken because you can't.
I'm not sure I'll find acting satisfying creatively forever. If you get the good roles, it's great - if you have the freedom to choose your projects and not just do anything and everything. But I'd love to artistically commit to a project from beginning to end, which I think you can only do as a writer or director.
And it's always the same kind of artist, I think, who has more enjoyment being slightly on the outside of things, who doesn't want to be sucked into the tyranny of the mainstream. Because once you get sucked into that, you're dead as an artist.
The main reason for choosing a project is not really the renown of the director that's making the project. I feel like it's the fact of an actor to constantly want to do different things.
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