A Quote by Jean Reno

I don't get the romances. I did try - a film called 'Roseanna's Grave' in the 1990s. I liked it. But the audience didn't come. — © Jean Reno
I don't get the romances. I did try - a film called 'Roseanna's Grave' in the 1990s. I liked it. But the audience didn't come.

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In America, instead of making the audience come to the film, the idea seems to be for you to go to the audience. They come up with the demographics for the film and then the film is made and sold strictly to that audience.
I loved making The Imitation Game and it's really gratifying to hear the audience's response to the character that I play. It was just a little thing that I did because I really liked the film and I liked Benedict [Cumberbatch] and I loved Morten's [director Morten Tyldum] previous film, Headhunters. For me, it was something I did thinking, "Wow, this is a lovely quality piece of work."
Carrie was a terrific piece of work. At the end of the movie comes, when Amy Irving kneels down to put the flowers on Carrie's grave, a hand comes up through the grave and seizes her by the arm. The audience went to the roof, totally to the roof. It was just the most amazing reaction. And I thought, 'We have a monster hit on our hands. Brian De Palma has done something new. He's actually created a shock ending that shocks an audience that was ready for a horror film.' And there were several people who did it after that.
I've always loved theatre because it's so immediate. The challenge of it is that, career wise, it's easier to get traction in the industry if you do film and TV because the audience is larger, and because the work can be seen for a longer period of time. I did solid work in a series of regional and Off-Broadway shows, but the work I did on TV or film will have a longer life with a larger audience (and with services like Netflix). Ultimately, there's something intimate about TV, because the storytelling and the actors come home with the viewer. It can be powerful because of that.
[ The Finest Hours] reminded me a lot of a film I did called Unstoppable in that you have a driving thriller aspect of the film and it's not all that complicated of a story and there's a simple elegance to it. I liked that. It is also driven by a really strong romance and ordinary men doing extraordinary things. I love that.
Even if the film doesn't come out quite as you'd hoped, the process can also be very rewarding. I feel that way about a film called 'Lay the Favorite' that I made with Stephen Frears. I did that because the character was a real leap for me. The film doesn't quite all add up internally, but I feel very proud of what I did on it.
I did a short film called 'Disco' and won an award for Best Supporting Actor at an indie film festival, and that was nice. Hopefully there's lots more to come.
My best film is always my next film. I couldn't make Chungking Express now, because of the way I live and drink I've forgotten how I did it. I don't believe in film school or film theory. Just try and get in there and make the bloody film, do good work and be with people you love.
I wanted to have a house near his grave, and that's exactly what I did get. When I woke up in the morning, I would open my window and look out upon Holy Trinity Church, where Shakespeare's grave is. Not once did it fail to move me.
The challenge to me as a director was for the audience to see the film as going on in a straight line, so that they did not sense all of these break-ups. I did not want a film to be a collage of all these images.
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.
What I try to do is write from the inside out. I really try to jump into the world of the film and the characters, try to imagine myself in that world rather than imagining it as a film I'm watching onscreen. Sometimes, that means I'm discovering things the way the audience will, with character and story.
As a filmmaker, I believe in trying to make movies that invite the audience to be part of the film; in other words, there are some films where I'm just a spectator and am simply observing from the front seat. What I try to do is draw the audience into the film and have them participate in what's happening onscreen.
It's a remake of a film called Inferno Affairs. It's a Hong Kong film, and if we come anywhere close to what they did in the original, we're going to have a hot property on our hands, because Inferno Affairs is a great piece.
I would have liked to come back in 300; they did an origins film of 300 just recently, and it would have been fun to come back and see what happened to my character.
Audience come with expectations, and our job is to engage them for two hours. We take efforts to make the story more interesting and also present it in such a way that it is liked by all the audience.
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