A Quote by Michael Jai White

It doesn't seem weird to me, at all. I'm in Baton Rouge getting ready to direct a movie for Sony, and I'm in the movie and I'm directing it. I know it's kind of this thing where some people find it difficult. I just finished a movie with Mario Van Peebles and he acted and directed as well too. I think we all feel similar that it just kind of seems natural.
I had the opportunity to work with Aliens and Predators when Resident Evil 2 was being made and it was for two different studios. It was for Fox and Sony. They don't care about one another. They just want their movies. So it was very difficult to delay one and... So I had to make a very painful decision to kind of step away from directing the second movie and with the third movie it was the same.
I'm pretty much a movie-to-movie guy. It's hard for me to multitask so I feel very one-thing-at-a-time oriented and I usually just wait until a movie's done and it's premiered, then just kind of reflect on what I'm interested in my own life and let the movies come to me rather than force them.
When you're drawing something, you kind of run a movie in your head. You might close your eyes or stare into the distance and kind of see a movie unfolding and, you know, grab a certain moment or think, 'Oh, yeah, that's when we need just the point that he appears around the corner but just as she's getting into the car,' you know?
With acting, if a friend asked me to be in a movie or TV show, there's a lot of things on my résumé I did without reading them or knowing what they were. I just said I'd do that because a friend wrote it, directed, produced, acted in it. With directing, I'm sticking to my guns, not that a lot of people are begging me to direct.
You can do a good movie, or you can do a good movie that can help people to feel the idea of what it is like to live. It can be good in an artificial way; it can be also a good movie for your own existence. You don't know that when you do a movie. You don't know if you succeeded, which is the most difficult thing.
I just find the people I want to work with and put it all together, and it's a lot of hard work, and all kinds of catastrophes happen, but I don't really get too much resistance. But when you make a movie, it seems like there's nothing but resistance. It's kind of a miracle that any movie ever gets made.
John Logan was kind of wrapping up - "Well, thanks for coming in..." - and I thought, "Oh, God, this is over and I'm out of here, and I really don't want to leave."So I said, "Can I ask you a question?" He said, "Sure." "What movie do you think you've seen more than any other movie?" And he said, "Wow, let me think about that. I guess probably The Searchers." And I said, "Well, oddly, that's the movie I've seen more than any other movie." And I wasn't just BS-ing. It's true. It's my favorite movie.
No, I wouldn't direct a movie, no. I couldn't. I don't have the patience for it, I don't have the people skills. You have to be clever. I'm not really clever in that kind of way. And you have to be able to manipulate people, but at the same time allow them to feel like they are manipulating you, to get the kind of movie that you want.
Basically, we [me and Evan Goldberg] started thinking about making a movie that was kind of a weed movie and action movie and had a real kind of friendship story to it, then that would be our favorite movie [Pineapple Express] ever.
I think 3D can be an incredible thing on a movie and a terrible thing for a movie, depending on what kind of movie it is. And I've seen movies where I thought the 3D really enhanced the experience, and sometimes where I thought it just detracted from it.
There's a big difference between trolling and just attacking guys to attack guys, to get under people's skin, and to genuinely express how you felt about something. Like if I go to a movie for example, and I watch a movie, and I wasn't a fan of it. I don't mind turning to my family or some buddies I'm with and saying "oh man, I really didn't like that movie." But I've never acted or directed in my life. But I'm able to voice my opinion about whether or not I enjoyed it or not.
A lot of it is just waking up and putting one foot in front of the other and going where I just go, a natural progression. The other thing is I do have a lot of ideas. TV seems to be where it happens faster, quicker. You are trying to get a movie off the ground, and it's very difficult. One movie takes two years to make
I directed fourteen movies. Every movie had Hector Elizondo. He didn't like Beaches. I don't know, it was originally not a happy movie at all, it was much sadder than that. And they brought me in to kind of make it a little more 'warm', I guess you might call it. The original ending was a whole messy thing.
You don't pay the same price for a Ferrari as you do for a Honda Accord. But for some reason, for movie tickets, you're asked to pay the same price for 'Avatar' as you are for some $2 million movie, which is kind of a weird thing when you think about it.
In a daydream sort of way, I think it would be pretty cool to direct a movie. But I have been on movie and TV sets and know it is hard work. I like directing it in my mind. It is easier.
I'm a director because I directed a movie. And if I have any advice for people, it's, 'Go write something; go direct it. If that's what you have a desire to do, go do it. If the movie stinks, just put it on the shelf and try to do it again.'
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