A Quote by Curtis Hanson

On the surface, Wonder Boys seemed like such a departure from L.A. Confidential - it's funny, it's contemporary, and so on - and yet at a certain point, I had a feeling that reminded me how I felt when I was shooting L.A. Confidential. I analyzed it for a while, and thought about how emotionally involved I was with the characters. Then I realized that in both movies, there are three main male characters and one female, and all of them are struggling to figure out what they're doing with their lives, independent of each other.
Although my stories are all very different on the surface, I like to write stories about characters struggling with big problems. I'm always reminded, no matter how different from me one of my characters is from me on the surface, how we're all pretty much the same underneath.
I like shows where the female characters are as funny as the male characters, not just commenting on how funny the male characters are.
I get the feeling that characters are written female when they have to be, and all the other characters are male, and it doesn't occur to somebody that the lawyer, the best friend, the landlord, whoever, can be female.
It's difficult to make a movie about a complicated, non-traditional female character. We see a lot more movies with male characters who are at that point in their lives, but not that many about females.
In ancient times, people weren't just male or female, but one of three types: male/male, male/female, female/female. In other words, each person was made out of the components of two people. Everyone was happy with this arrangement and never really gave it much a thought. But then God took a knife and cut everybody in half, right down the middle. So after that the world was divided just into male and female, the upshot being that people spend their time running around trying to locate their missing other half.
Just like how male actors get to play varied characters, I would also like to play characters that people don't normally see female characters portraying on screen.
I just felt like, you know, I read a lot of scripts out in L.A., out here in the industry and I just felt like this film was just being genuine. I just felt like it had really great characters. And all the three different characters have completely different stories and they're all kind of intertwined together thematically. So I just thought it had great characters, great themes
Simply stated, sometimes journalists can only get their information from informants who must remain anonymous in order to protect their careers and sometimes even their lives: Watergate: Confidential sources. The Pentagon Papers: Confidential sources. Enron: Confidential sources.
There was a while when I got really bad stage fright and I basically felt...I was incredibly angry. I felt like everything had been taken away from me and it was at that point that I realized how much doing stand up reminds me of my self love and curiosity about myself and love of other people because I don't go on stage to dominate.
I'm drawn to female characters, not all of them are strong characters. I think I'm drawn to female characters partly because they don't have as easy or as obvious a relationship to power in society, and so they suffer under social constraints or have to maneuver within them in ways men sometimes don't, or are unconscious about, or have certain liberties that are invisible to them.
I usually start with an ending, then outline high points of things that happen, and kind of make up the rest as I go along. Occasionally, the characters surprise me, and I wonder how we got here. Other times, the characters are stubborn and won't do something I want them to in the story.
I have a cousin, a second cousin, who lives in L.A., and she was with me while I was getting ready. She was talking about her father and his brothers. And I remember my mother's tales of how competitive they were with each other and how they would play for blood, you know. And I thought - I'm an only child, and I don't know what that's like. I have to figure out the Southern thing.
My favorite movies are movies from the '70s, like 'Midnight Cowboy' and 'Dog Day Afternoon' and 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,' and to me, 'Hereditary' seemed like it fit in with those movies, and it was just horrifying. It seemed like it took the things that I love about movies and really fleshed out characters.
I've done movies that have mostly feminine characters and elements, and I think that both 'Heathers' and 'Truth About Cats and Dogs' are, in their own weird ways - they're different ends of the girl movie spectrum, but they're very much centered around the female characters, and I like those movies, and I like working with good actresses.
My whole theory about why I couldn’t find any creators who realized they were leaving out female characters is because they were raised on the same ratio. I just heard someone the other day call it either ‘smurfing’ a movie, which is when there’s one female character, or ‘minioning’ a movie, which is when there’s no female characters.
My characters, I find them as I'm writing. It's quite incredible how fully realized they are in my mind, how many details I know about each of them.
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!