When I saw 'Bully' and I was 11 or 12 years old I thought I could do this; I could make movies. Larry Clark's cinematography is very raw. It's also based on a true story. I think a lot of the movies I like are based on true stories.
I've done so many movies with first-time directors, and honestly I just go with gut instinct. People that usually can tell me a good story, and talk to me about why the movie is the movie they want to make. I just go with my gut.
Most of the time, I see what I see, I search my feelings, and then I make my decisions based on my gut - and I don't always make the right ones.
Even if you're doing something that the studio sends you, or something that's based on a book or story, at the end of it all, you try to make whatever it is your own. This is based on my love of horror movies. Everything is based on something, in some way.
I have a feeling, one of those gut feelings, that I'll make pretty good movies the rest of my life.
I gut check my show. I say, I say, "Gut, gut, does that feel true to you?" And Gut says, "Yes it does, Stephen. Let's get a grilled cheese sandwich."
I've tried to distance myself from the RISE initiative based off a gut feeling I had. I've done little things here and there, but I wasn't included in the Super Bowl thing they did, and it's something I felt in my gut from the beginning. I respect the work that they've done, but things aren't aligning for me so I try to stay away from it.
What I love about sci-fi is that every generation's films are based on what we know at that point in time. We make movies about the future, but it's always based on what we have. Then, as science grows and we discover new things, so do our ideas.
You hear again and again that audiences want to see movies that are different, and critics say we make the same thing again and again in Hollywood, then you go and make something different, and you get kicked in the gut for it.
I always, as a firm rule, make my movies based on how inexpensively I can make them because that means the more freedom I'm going to have.
You hear again and again that audiences want to see movies that are different and critics say we [directors] make the same thing again and again in Hollywood, then you go and make something different and you get kicked in the gut for it.
All I can tell you is that you cannot make choices in your own career, either career choices or choices when you're actually working as an actor, based on trying to downplay or live up to a comparison with somebody else. You just can't do that. You have to do your own work based on your own gut, your own instincts, and your own life.
I choose films based on gut instinct.
What I love about sci-fi is that every generation's films are based on what we know at that point in time. We make movies about the future but it's always based on what we have. Then as science grows and we discover new things, so do our ideas. You know?
When you make movies based on real life, you try to exaggerate it.
I just want real reactions. I want people to laugh from the gut, be sad from the gut - or get angry from the gut.