A Quote by Michael Haneke
You cannot hurt animals, so what do I do? I kill the dog first. Then I do it with the boy. You're not supposed to break the illusion of this being a film, so I make the actor talk to the audience. Provocation is the principle of the whole film [ Funny Games]. It is very ironic.
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'Funny Games' was conceived as a provocation. My other films are different. If people feel my other films are, or respond to them as provocation, then that's quite different. 'Funny Games' is the only one of mine where my intention was to provoke the audience.
Every film for every actor is a make-or-break film. I believe every film has the power to break you or make you. So, an actor will treat every film like his last film. That's the way we need to work, and that's the way you can drum up that passion needed to do good work.
As I talk to film students now especially, I say, "The easiest job you'll ever get is to try to make your first film." That's the easy one to get, is the first film because nobody knows whether you can make a film or not.
A film is not a documentary. And what's wonderful about film is that it's a real provocation for people. I never, ever see film as being an absolute version of the truth.
It is ironic you could make an animated film about a dog that's a universal character, but God forbid it be a human being who is not a man.
I can understand that an audience, buying a ticket to see a picture of mine, wants to see something funny because they feel confident that at least I have a fighting chance to make a funny film when I make a film, whereas if I make a dramatic film there's one chance in a thousand that it's really going to come out great, so I understand how they feel about that and they're completely right.
An actor is only a part of the film, not the whole, and very often, he is moulded by the director. That is why a good director can make so much difference to a film.
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.
Getting the audience to cry for the Terminator at the end of T2, for me that was the whole purpose of making that film. If you can get the audience to feel emotion for a character that in the previous film you despised utterly and were terrified by, then that's a cinematic arc.
I'm very lucky to say that I worked with a lot of directors who cannot make a bad film. Like when Wim Wenders, they cannot make a bad film. They can make a film people don't like, or it's the wrong moment.
In 2013, I had to do 'The Wright Stuff' on about an hour's sleep. I was asked, 'What do you make of the situation in Mali?' and I said, 'Well, I've not seen the film but I know the dog dies in the end.' They were talking about the civil war, and the whole audience took an inward breath. I thought, 'Should I not have revealed the end of the film?'
I like Taika Waititi a lot. I thought 'Boy' was a really wonderful film, had great resonance. Very sad but also very funny. I thought 'What We Do in the Shadows,' the vampire film, was fantastic.
There is always pressure. If you make a flop film then you are under pressure to make a hit film. If you make a hit film then you are under pressure to surpass your own standard or at least deliver another hit because the audience also has expectations.
If a dog is biting a black man, the black man should kill the dog, whether the dog is a police dog or a hound dog or any kind of dog. If a dog is fixed on a black man when that black man is doing nothing but trying to take advantage of what the government says is supposed to be his, then that black man should kill that dog or any two-legged dog who sets the dog on him.
I believe thrillers work if the story is good. It is not easy to make a thriller because the audience is making their own story in their minds as they watch the film. You have to break that expectation and still make them like the film.
What's nice about writing and making films is that being able to see a film from the outside - from the inception through production and then completion - just informs what you're doing when you're an actor. And when you're an actor, it informs the decisions you make when you're making a film. It's using two different sides of your personality.
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