A Quote by Jon M. Chu

I may not get the opportunity to make movies for my whole life, but I'm going to make movies for the rest of my life. Maybe studios won't pay for it, but I'm going to do it because I love it. So, I just have to be proud of what I make, and what I'm trying to say in what I make. If people don't like it or people don't see it, that's beyond what I can control. I'm a storyteller, and people are going to listen or not and like it or not. That's only solidified over time.
There's no destination. There's no getting anywhere. There's just the going. The key to life is to make the going really fun. Because people that are like, “If I just get to this, then boom!” And then they get there and there's this dawning of an afterwards. Whereas I'm just always in the going. And it's not a frantic going like, “I gotta keep going or I'm gonna go nuts!” I can not do anything for weeks or months if I need to and just sit and read books or watch movies. I'm just as fine consuming and absorbing new art as I am trying to make it. But it's all in the going.
I make the joke, all the time, that if you have the word "man" and a number in the title, like Batman 2, Spider-Man 2 or Iron Man 12, you'll get it made. The kind of movies I make, studios don't make them. I've made a lot of movies, and at Castle Rock, we've made 125 movies. None of them get made at a studio. I've got to scrounge around for money, every time. I just like to tell stories. I'm a storyteller, so I want the most people to see it.
Ultimately, if you want to make movies, you've got to want to make movies every day, when people are paying you to make movies and when they're not, because you're going to get a lot more no's on this business, no matter what it is, than you are going to get yeses.
What I get really excited about are movies that I connect with emotionally. 'Deliverance' was on TV, and they don't really make movies like that anymore, just simple and scary. The truly scary thing is, 'I'm going to threaten your life, I'm going to threaten the people you love. What are you going to do about it?'
I would love to win an Oscar one day. That would be a very wonderful thing. But in the meantime, I really hope that I make films I'm proud of. A lot of people aren't going to like the movies I make, I'm sure. But as long as I'm proud of the movie and I'm not selling out, and I'm doing things that make me happy and make me grow as an actress, I'll be good.
It would be nice to make a movie that other people want to make, because every one of these movies, I basically have to find the only company in the world that's willing to make it, and it's always a big challenge. I end up spending a tremendous amount of energy and time trying to get money to make these movies and it's exhausting.
A lot of people are like, "How are you going to re-do it?" I'm not worried about what people are going to say because you know people are gonna be like, "It doesn't sound like this... It sounds like this." I'm just going to make music that I know I'm supposed to make.
Every time you do something, people are going to like it, people are going to hate it. You tend to make the movies on the basis you are making them for the people who are going to like them and not worrying too much about people who don't like them.
Hollywood is a business and movie studios are only going to do what's going to make money. It's not an altruistic thing. They are blatant grabs for money. Responsible studios want to make quality pictures, but at the same time nobody is going to make quality pictures they know aren't going to make any money.
No. You can't. And I can't do anything either, about my life, to change it, make it better, make me feel better about it. Like it better, make it work. But I can stop it. Shut it down, turn it off like the radio when there's nothing on I want to listen to. It's all I really have that belongs to me and I'm going to say what happens to it. And it's going to stop. And I'm going to stop it. So. Let's just have a good time.
You're not always going to hit the bull's-eye. I'm going to make movies that work and I'm going to make movies that don't work, and that's just a part of being creative. Because really, I think if you're taking risks and you're pushing yourself and you're doing things that scare you, you are going to fall on your face, and it's not always going to work.
Here's the truth about telling stories with your life. It's going to sound like a great idea, and you're going to get excited about it, and then when it comes time to do the work, you're not going to want to do it. It's like that with writing books, and it's like that with life. People love to have lived a great story, but few people like the work it takes to make it happen. But joy costs pain.
I wasn't actually going to see the original film [Lord of the Ring], because I didn't think it was possible that a film could represent the books appropriately. So I was protesting, and I wasn't going to see them. And then my family all took a jaunt together, the entire family, to see the movies, and were like, "What, you're just going to stay home?" So I saw the movies and was thoroughly impressed that Peter Jackson managed to make my vision of the book come to life, as well as my sister's and my father's, and my aunt's and my uncle's, everyone's.
You know, you walk through this hotel, you're not going to see all white people; you're not going to see all black people; you're going to see what the world looks like. I promised myself that if I ever got an opportunity where I would be able to make a difference and have a say, that I would want to deliver [that] message [of inclusivity].
People seem to think that my movies are so carefully coordinated and arranged - and in a lot of ways, they are - but every single time I make a movie, I feel that every director makes these choices. You make choices about your script, you make choices about your actors, and how you're going to stage it, and how you're going to shoot it, and what the costumes are going to be like, and in every single detail, you make that decision. And for me, what ends up happening is, I wind up surprised at the combination of all these ingredients. It never is anything like what I expected.
Hopefully with everything we do, we'll tell stories that make people feel a little less alone and like they're going to be okay. That's what we seek out in the movies that we love and that we watch, over and over again, so to offer that to other people is where we want to be.
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