A Quote by Sudha Kongara
I revisit stories and see if they are still living and breathing, because if you do a film you live with that story for another year. I can't do a film in six months and scoot.
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After I finish any film, I move to the next one. It takes about a year to write and another six months are for pre-production and other things. You need a minimum of two-and-a-half months for the shooting of a new film. Then, I also edit my own film.
With independent film, simply because they don't have the money to make a big-budget film, they're forced to make a story that's important to them, that they would like to see on film, a personal story that people can relate to, about people, where you can see the love of the characters.
The reason I live in America is because I mean literally every six or seven years I've done something in England. The last lead I had in an English film I did was 1998. So that's why I live here. It's because I get more work. I'll travel back for radio, you know what I mean. I've just got to consider myself to be living in the middle of the ocean, and that way I have a really nice career, if I'm prepared to do television, radio, theater, and film.
I co-pastor now, so I preach six months, then another guy preaches six months. So that's really why I'm preparing for January, because I'll finish in June; then I'll be writing and doing other projects for the rest of the year.
If you need to get in physical shape for a film and you have to maintain that for six months, at the start of the film, I was never able to do it.
I guess my first digital movie was 'Tintin' because 'Tintin' has no film step. There is no intermediate film step. It's 100% digital animation, but as far as a live-action film, I'm still planning to shoot everything on film.
I make a film - and once I've made it, everyone comes along and says 'Ah! This is a film that's political, or social', or whatever. But I'm not telling the story that they see. I made a film, told a story, but I wasn't thinking about exactly what it all meant.
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 people don't understand about making a film is sometimes your experience on the film shapes who you are. You're gone to another country for five months, maybe more, there's training leading up to it... It's a whole life experience that people don't see because they just see the final product wrapped up in a couple hours. You don't see everything that happens around it. I think it's hard to say one movie or one thing; I think they all shape who you are.
My second film 'Johnny Gaddar' got delayed because of financial reasons. The film was taken over by another production house and in the process we lost a year.
Um, 'Soul Food'... Another wonderful little movie that could. Here's a film that, I think our budget was maybe $6 million. We shot it in Chicago in six weeks. I was so proud of the film, because it showed America that an African-American film about family could sell, could do well, could cross over and have true meaning.
My best film is always my next film. I couldn't make Chungking Express now, because of the way I live and drink I've forgotten how I did it. I don't believe in film school or film theory. Just try and get in there and make the bloody film, do good work and be with people you love.
Oh my God, I love UCLA so much. Their film school is great because it's unstructured, so there's a freedom to fail in there and just tell your story, and everybody makes a film. It's so important to have that freedom in film school because that's what you're there for: to learn and make a film.
I meet all these American filmmakers that film for months and months, and it's a mystery to me. I couldn't make a film like that. I have to be very clear in what I'm doing and where it's going, and be very disciplined about what I film.
'Bubba Ho-Tep' was an accidental story that turned out to be my first film adaptation, and it's still going strong in story and film.
But in film you always watch situations or stories that you really have no relation to. A lot of times just because there's no personal connection doesn't mean you can't connect with the film or the characters in the film.
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