Debra Granik Quotes
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Films set in 90210 are ten a penny. But there's rarely room to make films about a different postal code, to show the lives of ordinary Americans who have to live with very limited material resources.
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I'm always searching to learn more about our large and diverse country.
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It can't change anything immediately, but films can absolutely be catalysts for conversation.
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I feel like reality TV has thrown a difficult wrench in the system - on the programming and making side, and on the curating side - which is that we now have a higher threshold for the salacious. We have a higher threshold, unprecedented, for fast, cheap, and out of control.
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You can't just pill away injuries that go deep in someone. They don't just stop those feelings from existing.
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There is a porous membrane between a documentary that doesn't use interviews and what you would call a neorealist hybrid film.
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We're always on the search for a novel or a source or an existing screenplay, or writing something ourselves that turns us on. But because films cost a lot of money to make and a huge amount of effort to get the people to rally, you have to really like it; you can't just semi-like it. Getting to 'really like' is the part that takes the minute.
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Time's up on cheesy, lesser, boring roles for females in the stories that we try to tell.
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The questions that loom can be intimidating. 'What kind of moves is she gonna make? What is she gonna do?' There is this pressure that you're supposed to keep impressing.
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The protagonist in 'Winter's Bone' was a really good role for a female. She was strong; she didn't have to conform to something or be a sidekick to any man. That's part of what you're responding to; it's a woman-centric situation. Her value in the film was not reliant on any man.
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I'm always looking for instances of people doing things for and with each other for pleasure, for passion, for camaraderie, from kindness. It's the anthropology of people figuring how to punctuate life with the lyrical.
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It's almost like Time's Up allowed some really good old-school players to stand up and say, 'We're actually just really normal companies that want to facilitate culture-making. Some of us are even in it for the slow returns.'
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People need meeting places. You need places where ideas get exchanged and you see each other's faces once in a while.
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For documentaries, I think streaming plays an amazing role, but it's a problem when the one service you initially relied on to have an incredible buffet - 'Come and see a lot of world cinema, and the lives of ordinary people as well' - all of a sudden is narrowed down until it's just gladiator after gladiator - and bloodlust.
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Stereotypes are convenient. And yet within them, everyone will say there's something that - you know, they don't come for no reason. It's just that it takes time to explore complexity.
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It's risky to show poor Americans. People see it as a downer. But I really wanted to make a tightly wound piece of storytelling that also happened to explode the myth of American affluence.
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The process of starting up a new film is one of looking through a lot of material and trying to find something you really like. And it does sometimes take a minute.
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It's been a pleasure to see female comedians be prominent and flourish - like Kate McKinnon's Rudy Giuliani impressions, which are uncanny in their precision.
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All filmmakers want the option to make another film, to have it not always be such an uphill battle - for it to be our life, our working life.
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It's kind of a test when you read a novel thinking about its potential for the screen: How does it play on your mind's screen?
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There's a period where you feel very hinky and low about yourself, like, 'That was a lot of time, and there's nothing to show for it.' I've tried to tell myself that if you're going to be a filmmaker, you can't really talk like that about time, because you'll hate yourself or feel very worthless.
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I'm from the East Coast, and so therefore, the Pacific Northwest forest is very exotic land to me.
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No one has a green light when they start a documentary - not ever.
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Sometimes I struggle with being American.