A Quote by Josh Trank

I feel like we're going to see a lot more movies that mix documentary style with fiction, more along the lines of 'District 9.' — © Josh Trank
I feel like we're going to see a lot more movies that mix documentary style with fiction, more along the lines of 'District 9.'
It's difficult to make movies. For me it was easier, as a refugee in Switzerland, to make documentary films, because I didn't need a lot of money for it. The way I tell my story or my opinion would be very similar in both fiction and documentary forms. But I found I could speak more effectively to convey this brutal reality through documentary than I could through fiction.
I decided about a year ago, and I just feel like I want to see more personal style in people, and I feel like if I'm going to be out there in the public eye, they should see who I am and how I dress, and I feel like it, also.
You see that a lot in movies, and today you see it more in movies that are made, because I feel more movies are made towards groups than towards individuals, and they're made more for mass media than for sitting in a movie house allowing it to happen.
I think you can do a lot with fiction, and in some cases you can say even more in fiction than you can in straight-up documentary journalism.
When you say documentary, you have to have a sophisticated ear to receive that word. It should be documentary style, because documentary is police photography of a scene and a murder ... that's a real document. You see, art is really useless, and a document has use. And therefore, art is never a document, but it can adopt that style. I do it. I'm called a documentary photographer. But that presupposes a quite subtle knowledge of this distinction.
I like style. For Dior, I did more of a collaboration shoot, not just a single image - so there was more to it. It's a very prestigious brand. I like their style and feel like their style is mine.
Being on television is a little constraining. You spend six to eight months filming, and you get stuck in that gear. I feel like doing movies is a lot more my style.
I'd always wanted the show to be more reality based science fiction, something along the lines of The Day the Earth Stood Still, which I consider to be the classic science fiction film.
I've been encouraging documentary filmmakers to use more and more humor, and they're loath to do that because they think if it's a documentary it has to be deadly serious - it has to be like medicine that you're supposed to take. And I think it's what keeps the mass audience from going to documentaries.
I never saw myself as a director. It's certainly a second language but making movies for 40 years, you pick stuff up. However, this style of making movies, this documentary style, is easier for me because I gather a lot of material and with an editor, write it on screen. You try to write based on what you shot.
One of the things that is so striking to me about the South, especially living here now as an adult, is that I see a lot more mixed-race couples than I saw when I was growing up in the 1980s and the 1990s. I feel like living across the color lines has become something that's more expected.
In some ways I spend longer at non-fiction because there are a lot of different threads to bring together. But non-fiction is more reflective than immersive. The problem with fiction sometimes is that you have to leave the real world to enter the fictional one. And that takes so much, goes into your head for so long?.?.?.?I don't know, I just feel less inclined toward that these days, and more inclined to remain in my own life. I do like really good fiction, but it's getting harder to hold my attention in a novel.
Let's say you would see me in a lot more big movies had I done movies that I'd been asked to do playing bad guys. Now that I have a child on the way, I think that you'll probably be seeing me play more bad guys. If that's what's going to put bread on the table, that's what I'm going to be doing.
Did you know that there are no straight lines in the universe? Life doesn't travel in perfectly straight lines. It moves more like a winding river. More often than not, you can only see to the next bend, and only when you reach that next turn can you see more.
I think action movies on the whole have moved more and more into large spectacle, even leaving out super hero movies that seem to me to be more a fantastic science fiction than they are action movies.
You'll see a lot more blood in 'Saw' movies or something like that than you will in either of the 'Last House' movies. I kind of think it owes more to 'The Virgin Spring' which is the original source material, the Bergman movie.
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