Neill Blomkamp Quotes
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I don't put any pressure on myself in terms of what people or fans do or don't want. It really just doesn't occur to me. I honestly just want to make the films I want to see as a fan. The film will survive or fail in my mind by how much I like it. Having said that, everyone wants their films to do well and to be well-received.
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I just watch movies I like over and over. It seems to be a lot of sci-fi stuff. My favorites are probably - besides the first two 'Alien' films, I watch '2001', I watch 'Star Wars', the first ones, because those actually had a huge effect on me as well, 'Empire Strikes Back' especially.
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I'm not particularly interested in working with movie stars. It depends on where you come from, I suppose. Why are you making films? The reason I want make films is because they convey ideas. I think some directors make films because they want to hang out with movie stars and be part of Hollywood. They want to be a star themselves.
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I have zero strategy for my career - like, zero. I could get as much satisfaction about doing a $20,000 shot film the same way I could do a $100 million film with a bunch of effects.
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If there isn't a deep core reason for a film existing, what is the point? For me to be known as a filmmaker that makes films that have a point, I'm stoked.
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There has to be the popcorn genre element, or I don't engage the same way. I like action and vehicle design and guns and computer graphics as much as I like allegory. It's a constant balancing game. I want audiences to be on this rollercoaster that fits the Hollywood mould, but I also want them to absorb my observations.
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I think there's a lot of crazy stuff on the Internet. You read stuff that is wild speculation, and there's an element of it that makes me not trust it because there's this undercurrent of insanity to it sometimes.
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The concept of even having fans is still kind of weird to me. I really just feel like a filmmaker that is only just finding my foot in and is beginning to participate in Hollywood and making films. So the idea of any kind of fandom or people that are waiting for something that I may release is very distant in my mind.
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Satire also allows you to make fun of every different aspect. It allows you to make fun of both sides. It allows you to make fun of everything, really, so you can do it in a harmless way.
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There are loads of sociopolitical, racial, class and future-planet situations that really interest me, but I'm not really interested in making a film about them in a film that feels like reality because people view that in a different way. I like using science fiction to talk about subjects through the veneer of science fiction.
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In a lot of the really impoverished areas of Johannesburg you see these packets of cheesy puffs which are like 6 feet long and the width of a basketball, and they're transparent and they have like 10,000 cheesy puffs in them, and you can buy that for like 50 cents. It's kind of a weird treat that you'd see people having in the townships.
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A lot of America is kind of done. People have been making films about it for 100 years. Everything to me feels used up. But Jo-Burg feels unbelievably inspirational to me.
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I think growing up in South Africa, and then moving to Canada, I'm just genuinely interested in the difference between the First World and the Third World, immigration, and how the new, globalized world is beginning to operate. All of those things run through my mind a lot.
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High-level actors can be all about their close-ups and the size of their trailers. I'd heard these horror stories of how a really powerful actor can come in and change your script.
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The only genre of movie that I could see making that doesn't have anything magical or otherworldly about it would be a war film. I'm very interested in history, and a war film could be something that would lure me in.
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If you don't have something that glues the audience to the screen, you're in trouble.
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If you just compare South Africans to the rest of the world, I think that white South Africans, and especially English-speaking white South Africans, are exactly the same as Brits or Australians or New Zealanders or Canadians or Americans.
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I want to make a film that is commercially successful because that means that the larger cinema-going audience around the world like the movie, which is my goal. That's my job, to make films that people respond to.
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I think the reason you use an actor is if they are right for the role. Most of the high-profile stars tend to be good actors. That's probably what led to their fame. So if they are right for the movie, you can certainly use them. But I don't want to, not at all. Stardom and Hollywood overpower the ideas and the film.
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I never really think of something in terms of what not to do. It's always what's appealing or what's cool.
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On one hand, I think people are destined for something incredible if we don't wipe ourselves out, but I think we're going to wipe 90 percent of ourselves out.
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I think the world of 'District 9' has a lot of race and oppression-based ideas that I would still like to explore in that world.
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I'm a massive hater of 3D. I don't like it at all. For me, you go to a movie theatre and you want to be taken to a place and transported to a place and be in that environment, and I know 3D is meant to do that, but the effect for me is the reverse. I feel like I'm looking though muddy water, and I can't really see the image.
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I think naturally I'm a very visual kind of person. If I wasn't in filmmaking, I'd be in something related to visuals. And I used to actually work as a visual-effects artist.