I think every filmmaker in Europe would be lying if they didn't say one day they just wanted to make a movie here in Hollywood or at least try it. It's very different from European filmmaking, because here it's like a real industry. It's very much about money and making money, which I think is fine, because it's very expensive to make movies.
I was fortunate to write pretty much a year out of film school and start making movies in the Hollywood studio system. But with each progressive film it became more frustrating not being able to speak and say things I wanted to say.
I came out to Hollywood when I was just 18, and my dad, he was really into Hollywood and theater and art, and I guess growing up, he exposed me to a lot of culture, and I just started making Super-8 films in high school and decided I wanted to be a filmmaker.
I don't want to say, 'I want to be in Hollywood,' like so many actors do, but I know that Hollywood is still making good movies, and I'd like to be part of that someday.
People say that making money in the content-media game is hard, and that is just, like, not my experience. It's super-confusing, 'cause everyone's like, 'Oh, how are you going to monetize?' It's easy: just start talking, and then money rolls in.
I like to go to the movies at The Hollywood Forever Cemetery. They do this thing in The Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood where everybody sits out on the grass and they project movies and it's very romantic and very old-school Hollywood, so I love that.
I wasn't making any money, but I didn't feel unsuccessful because of that. You can do that in New York but not in Hollywood. In Hollywood, it is how much money you make.
I had a friend in high school who badly wanted to make movies and would recruit me as an actor. It was always so much fun. I decided, I'm going to go to Hollywood and make movies, which is a thought I'd never had before.
I was really, really stagnating and getting bored in the steady work of television and didn't really know what movies I would be making that Hollywood would be making, and then I went on to 'Game of Thrones,' and it was just like, everything I've been waiting to do was handed to me by really nice people.
I don't like high concept movies very much, and the kind of scripts that I would occasionally get offered tended to be really high concept comedies or romantic comedies. I just don't like it. I like much more realistic movies with actual psychology and behavior in them.
Hollywood is high school with money.
I believe in making movies very inexpensively; I think that way too much money is spent on making movies. Enough movies are being made, but not enough experimental ones.
Pretty early on in making the first movie I realized that this is what I wanted to do. I felt like by that time I just found my niche, like this is what I was supposed to be doing. So I completely submerged myself into the world of watching movies, making my own movies, buying video cameras and lights. When I wasn't making a movie, I was making my own movies. When I wasn't making movies, I was watching movies. I was going back and studying film and looking back at guys that were perceived as great guys that I can identify with. It just became my life.
THE DYING GAUL is a Hollywood satire. But Hollywood is not the real subject matter here. My play uses that world of high-rolling big money - that crazy-making business - to examine a whole range of subjects.
When I was in high school, I felt totally alienated from the world, but I loved movies. They were my escape, but coming from a disadvantaged community, I never knew that filmmaking was an option for me. A program like School of Doc would have been a game-changer.
I went to a local high school in Lancaster. Not much I can say about it; it was pretty much your typical public high school back in Pennsylvania.