The movies I've made, I'm really proud of them. But the experience I've had is, people say to me, 'Oh my God, I saw your movie on HBO. It was actually funny.' Like, that's always the experience. It's a backhanded compliment.
"Dark Fantasy" was my long, backhanded apology. You know how people give a backhanded compliment? It was a backhanded apology. It was like, all these raps, all these sonic acrobatics. I was like: "Let me show you guys what I can do, and please accept me back. You want to have me on your shelves."
I think I've had a lot of experience with watching other people shepherd my ideas with the 'Saw' films. They made four 'Saw' movies without me. I never really had a protective or fierce policy towards that. I let it go.
When I was heavy, people would say to me - and it was such a backhanded compliment - they would say, 'You've got such a beautiful face,' in the way of, like, 'Oh, isn't it a shame that from the neck down you're questionable.'
I will tell you that when I was heavy, people would say to me - and it was such a backhanded compliment - they would say, 'You've got such a beautiful face,' in the way of, like, 'Oh, isn't it a shame that from the neck down you're questionable.'
For me, whatever the outcome, it's nice to sit back to something and say, "Man, I'm really proud of that. I'm real proud of the experience that I had, I'm proud to be a part of something so iconic whether anyone watches it or not. They can't take away the experience that I had.
'Crash' came from personal experience. I saw things inside me from living in L.A. that made me uncomfortable. I saw horrible things in people and saw terrible things in myself. I saw a black director completely humiliated, but the three people around me just thought it was funny. 'No,' I said, 'that is selling your soul.'
I actually do like scary movies. I used to hate scary movies. You know, when I was young, I saw 'The Changeling,' with George C. Scott, which I think is the scariest movie ever made. After I saw that, I swore I would never see a horror film again. Then I started making them.
You can't teach anyone. You can't tell anyone. That's the thing you have to sit down and experience in order for it to mean anything. You can't intellectualize it. It's like why movies are cool. It's a combination of pictures and design and acting and music can create an experience that is outside of the experience that you can actually have in reality, which gets to my motion picture philosophy. People are like, 'aren't you trying to make the movies as real as you can?'
To me, comedies are usually the least funny movies. Movies that are actually a comedy are usually not all that funny. To me Goodfellas and Raging Bull are two of the funniest movies I ever saw.
I certainly didn't say while writing 'Gossip Girl,' 'Oh this is going to be big!' It was really like, 'Oh god, everyone's gong to hate these people! They're so bratty!' But I actually think what is so appealing about them is the humor in them.
I'm so bad at dancing that I've actually been in two movies where the director of the film saw me dancing and thought it was so funny that in one movie they had me do it as the mental dancing of a real simple person. The other one was, like, to-be-laughed-at dancing. That's how bad my dancing is.
Don't be ashamed of your age. You've lived a long time. You've learned a lot. Tout you knowledge. Be proud of your experience. Be proud of who you've become. Don't hide, and don't be ashamed like, "Oh my God. I'm nearly turning 50," or, "I'm turning 60. Shhh, don't tell nobody."
People say, 'If you open a movie online at the same time as in movie theatres, no one is going to go to the movies.' That's just not true. People love to go out and have a shared experience; they always will.
You can find the richness in any moment, even the most seemingly bleak. To try to do a movie about that was a joyful experience. So actually, it was really the context of it that made the experience so worthwhile, rather than the actual subject matter, if that makes sense.
I always worry that people are going to be very confused; sometimes timelines get confused with how movies get made. So when I say, "Oh, I made this movie when I was going through a divorce," people think, "Oh no! She's pregnant with a child and divorced?"
If you go to a movie and it's a great experience, the experience at the end of it is always like this sadness that it's over, that your time with these characters is finished. There's almost like an achy feeling that I have when I go to a movie that I love and it ends.