Debra Granik Quotes
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The immigration process is so unbelievably complicated and expensive and endless!
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We need cultural awareness and a cooperative approach with other countries versus a dominating approach.
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I swing with a lot of torque from non-fiction to fiction, and I really like that place in between.
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I'm looking for a living wage and to continue my work. The frustration comes from when I can't do the things that matter most to me. It's when someone comes and says, 'I will finance your movie if you cast so and so.'
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Every filmmaker has this short book of films that don't get made - for a whole host of reasons.
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When I'm interested in an aspect of someone's life, I want to ask about their experiences, their survival strategies, and what they do to keep their lives interesting.
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Some of the subject matters that I like to make stories about are definitely not inherently commercial. So I have to look for a very special kind of financing and go down a very gentle path in order to make my films, as do basically all social-realist filmmakers. It's a long process.
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The Oscars have always been an arena in which very commercial films are recognised, and I don't mean that in a bitter way; I just didn't ever look in that direction.
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I will always face the conundrum that the subjects I'm attracted to aren't essentially commercial.
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My first narrative films developed out of a documentary process - finding someone who was willing to be filmed, watching, listening, taking copious notes and many hours of video footage.
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When men's lives become extremely hard, women learn how to deal with them and assist them but also develop quiet systems of coping and managing.
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I think one thing that's always a concern to me is you see a role, and you're not seeing the character; you're seeing so-and-so do it. Then I'm taken out of the story considerably, personally.
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In Hollywood, only a female who's massively damaged is interesting.
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In documentary, mostly, people are going to say untoward things; people are going to have gnarly beliefs. People aren't perfect.
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I don't want to be on a soapbox, but I feel like a lot of documentary filmmakers are part of the ancient tradition of writing down notes, of saying, 'Hey people, hey people!'
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You will never go wrong with actually photographing process. It's primitive. Humans love to see the bipedal animal in us finish things. We just like it!
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I need and want to see capable women. I don't like to see them weep all the time.
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History has shown that there needs to be some agora, or public spaces, and I think that we already live a lot of our life on a laptop, or even smaller devices that we hold in our hands.
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It's funny: your happiness is contingent on a bigger picture besides just yourself.
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A role is never just a ready-made thing.
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My first camera job was filming workplace safety videos, which involved months of watching and videotaping people doing their jobs. I was hooked - from there, I wanted to know where they lived and the rest of their habits and desires.
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For whole swaths of people, that map of, 'Come along this way, come to college, do this and that,' isn't offered.
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Film is a team thing. There is no auteur.
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A big part of the equation for 'Winter's Bone' was making it for so little that we owe nobody. We had a guaranteed loan and were able to pay it back.