A Quote by Steven Soderbergh

You don't go make 'Schizopolis' if you're trying to protect some idea of yourself as a filmmaker. — © Steven Soderbergh
You don't go make 'Schizopolis' if you're trying to protect some idea of yourself as a filmmaker.
Blaming is a way to protect your heart, trying to protect what is soft and open and tender in yourself.
The very first idea I ever had about making a film... my first thought about ever being a filmmaker was when I was sixteen years old and I wanted to make a Viking movie. And I wanted to make it in old Norse, which I was studying at the time. It's odd because at that age that's a stupidly ridiculous idea 'cause how will I ever be a filmmaker.
We didn't set out to make some polemic about life in the digital age, I can only react emotionally to story ideas. You hear an idea and you go, 'That's cool. I can see spending a few years of my life working on that.' As a filmmaker, you approach it like, 'OK. They're going to give you all this money to make this movie. It's like an electric train set you get to play with.'
When you're young, you sort of have an idea that this is how it's always gonna be as a filmmaker. And then you have the ups and downs of trying to get your art created in an industry that doesn't traditionally make films with you and people that look like you behind the camera.
In a way, the truth is that I was dreaming to do a movie in the United States just because, as a filmmaker, I always loved the idea of trying to make movies in a different culture, in a different way. It's always interesting to make a movie abroad.
Something like trying to protect yourself all the time, things like trying to outwit fate. Those things can be the worst thing you can do for yourself.
Every filmmaker's just going to keep trying to make it the best you can make it: make it as potent and interesting and entertaining and exciting and tough and sexy as you can.
The creative process for a musician is very different than for a filmmaker. I have an idea and I can pretty much execute it. As old as I am now and as long as I've been doing it, I can pretty much get it done in a week. While a filmmaker has a great idea that should be out tomorrow, but he has to go through this process of getting financing, then selling it, then casting. I've always been in awe of filmmakers and their patience in realizing their vision because I could never do that.
Nothing is drearier than just always telling the truth about yourself. Rousseau, who as far as I can tell was a pathological liar, made this wonderful distinction between lying, which he said there was something wrong with if you were trying to extract an advantage for yourself or evade responsibility for some nasty thing you'd done. But if all you're really trying to do is impress or keep it young or make life more vivid and interesting, go for it! There's no real harm in doing something like that. I think people can be overly saddled to the truth.
Upon graduation, go out into the world and try to find yourself. What do I mean by that? Read Socrates, no. Get a job? Not yet. Go out and do some crazy stuff. Don't hurt anybody including yourself, but take some risks. Travel a little bit. Make big mistakes that you have to apologize for. Do stuff that will make you relatable to the world. And whatever jobs you settle into, you will be better at it, for it.
I am human. I am messy. I'm not trying to be an example. I am not trying to be perfect. I am not trying to say I have all the answers. I am not trying to say I'm right. I am just trying - trying to support what I believe in, trying to do some good in this world, trying to make some noise with my writing while also being myself.
Some black filmmakers will say, "I don't want to be considered a black filmmaker, I'm a filmmaker." I don't think that. I'm a black woman filmmaker.
Instead of trying to make your life perfect, give yourself the freedom to make it an adventure, and go ever upward.
You get a painting idea, and you go do that. You get a cinema idea, and you go in to do that. The difference is, even though the paintings might take some time to make, with cinema you are booked for a year and a half, minimum.
You must get an education. You must go to school, and you must learn to protect yourself. And you must learn to protect yourself with the pen, and not the gun.
And as a filmmaker, I'm trying to unhook myself from this idea that unless you have a brilliant, long, enormously lucrative theatrical run, that your movie somehow failed. And I don't believe that.
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