A Quote by Zadie Smith
Some people like just sitting down and being taken for a ride. That's a beautiful thing that fiction can do. But it's not the only thing. In television and film, people are ready to accept any kind of jump cut, but the slightest disturbance on the page ruffles their feathers.
Related Quotes
You buy a car or any other thing when you see someone else having it. So people will only buy a thing when they see a system in somebody's house and that takes time. The corporate people have taken the poor people for a ride. So that needs to break and the trust needs to be created that this system will actually work.
[Being a good comedian] is a skill, but it's also a weird thing that only certain people can do. I always equate it to surgeons and how they can just cut people open and operate. Certain people are just wired differently, and I feel like comics are the same way.
The most important thing to a lot of people, is to belong to something that's hip or whatever. To be a part of something that's not society, just a clique. And they get real sidetracked trying to think like everyone else. They don't realize that you have to motivate yourself to do things you want to do. Some people just like going along for the ride. And those are the kind of people I don't get along with too well.
It kind of hit me at some point during the process that most people in the film business - not just the executives, the people who make them, too - tend to come from pretty upper-class backgrounds. If they go work a job, it's to have that experience, that sort of thing. After they graduate college, they have time to go visit Europe and take some time off and get their heads together. That kind of thing, I sure didn't have.
One of the problems with episodic television of any color is that everything has got to be okay at the end of the episode so it can start again next week. So the events that occur are rarely life-changing. But with film, you can say that this thing only happened once; this is a major thing that happened to these people.
The world is like a ride in an amusement park. And when you choose to go on it you think it's real because that's how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round. It has thrills and chills and it's very brightly coloured and it's very loud and it's fun, for a while. Some people have been on the ride for a long time and they begin to question: "Is this real, or is this just a ride?" And other people have remembered, and they come back to us, they say, "Hey, don't worry, don't be afraid, ever, because this is just a ride." And we kill those people.
Yes, the fear of its blankness. At the same time, I kind of loved it. Mallarmé was trying to make the page a blank page. But if you're going to make the page a blank page, it's not just the absence of something, it has to become something else. It has to be material, it has to be this thing. I wanted to turn a page into a thing.
The first thing I say when people ask what's the difference [between doing TV and film], is that film has an ending and TV doesn't. When I write a film, all I think about is where the thing ends and how to get the audience there. And in television, it can't end. You need the audience to return the next week. It kind of shifts the drive of the story. But I find that more as a writer than as a director.
I was on Broadway for three years with Spiderman and that amount of time spent on a show - it's a grind being on Broadway. The people that do that are probably the hardest working people. I shouldn't say that, because there's a lot of hard work that goes on in film and television, as well. That consistency of the grind of eight shows a week - I feel ready to go back to it now after having a bit of a break. I like to have the chance to jump between different art forms, whether it be theatre, film, TV, music. It's really wonderful to have opportunities in different arenas.
Some people have therapy, some people are alcoholics or they're in AA. Some people jump out of planes on weekends or find ways to release this kind of thing. And for me, it's acting. I find acting very therapeutic for whatever it is.
It would just be a pamphlet. Three pages. The first page would be Drugs I Have Taken and then a list. The next page would be People I Have Slept With and then another list. Then the last page would be Famous People I Have Partied With and then another list. Because that's all people write in their autobiographies. Cut out all the bullshit and it's just a three-page pamphlet.
If you want a film and they don't want you, sometimes you have to go fight for it. Sometimes that ends up just being a meeting really, just sitting down with them and just saying here is my vision for it and here is why I really love it. But for the most part, I think filmmakers gravitate towards people that are excited - as excited as they are about the film and as passionate about it. So sometimes going after it isn't so much a function of auditioning as it is just sitting down with the filmmaker.
I just couldn't have people thinking that I only believe thin is beautiful. Thin is beautiful, but it's not the only kind of beautiful. I didn't want people to get the wrong message because of some retouching.
People apparently only read mystery stories of any length. With mysteries, the longer the better, and people will read any damn thing. But the indulgent, 800-page books that were written a hundred years ago are just not going to be written anymore, and people need to get used to that.
If I'm not working, I really have nothing to do with it - I'm not hanging out and mixing with film people. Not that I have anything against film people; they're some of the best people around and some of the worst people around, just like in any business... they just gesticulate a little bit more.
I think I have an obligation, to the people who have consented to be in the film, to make a film that is fair to their experience. The editing of my films is a long and selective process. I do feel that when I cut a sequence, I have an obligation to the people who are in it, to cut it so that it fairly represents what I felt was going on at the time, in the original event. I don't try and cut it to meet the standards of a producer or a network or a television show.
Related Authors
Charles Bukowski Quotes
American
Novelist
Charles Dickens Quotes
English
Novelist
Chuck Palahniuk Quotes
American
Novelist
Ernest Hemingway Quotes
American
Novelist
George Eliot Quotes
British
Novelist
George Orwell Quotes
British
Novelist
George R. R. Martin Quotes
American
Novelist
Jane Austen Quotes
British
Novelist
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
German
Novelist
Margaret Atwood Quotes
Canadian
Novelist
Nicholas Sparks Quotes
American
Novelist
Paulo Coelho Quotes
Brazilian
Novelist
Sarah Dessen Quotes
American
Novelist
Stephenie Meyer Quotes
American
Novelist
Veronica Roth Quotes
American
Novelist
Victor Hugo Quotes
French
Novelist