Derek Cianfrance Quotes
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I love people that work with passion and love. When you make choices that way, there's reverberations, consequences. That's what I'm interested in, that echo, that ripple of choice.
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We had all these smiley family pictures all over the walls of my house, but I always found those pictures to be odd because we weren't smiling all the time. I don't want to paint the picture of a total dysfunctional house, but there were a lot of arguments in that house. A lot of pain.
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There was a time in my early 20s when I would leave a movie theater and just feel so alone and lonely afterwards. I just felt like my life was nothing like those characters up on the screen, so perfect all the time. Why didn't I talk like that? Why don't I look like that?
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I feel similar to a lot of people. I don't feel unique. So what I'm trying to do in my films is provide something for people like me, but also a collection of scenes that instigate.
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As a writer, I always peel back the layers, go to the most sensitive places uncomfortably close to the heart.
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I grew up Catholic, so I feel guilty about everything.
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I was a member of the VHS generation. I used to study movies as a kid because I had a VCR and could record a movie on HBO and just watch it repeatedly.
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I'm trying to be the coach. My actors are my players. They're doing things that I'm too cowardly to do myself.
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I think book adaptations, the best one to me is like 'Brokeback Mountain.' Which is a short story, 21 pages, that expands so beautifully into a movie.
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I'm not asking actors to act. I'm asking them to behave. I want to see their being, not how they can fake it.
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I ask all my actors to do two things: I ask them to fail for me, and I ask them to surprise me.
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I never learned to be a writer. I never took screenwriting courses. I never read anyone's scripts. As a writer, my only guiding principle has been to write about things that scare me, write about things that make me feel vulnerable, write about things that will expose my deepest fears, so that's how I write.
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I love actors that are brave, that are courageous. And courage to me is not the absence of fear, it's the presence of fear, and they go to places that really scare them, because as an audience, that's where you feel danger.
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There's something so glorious in giving control to the world. I think that's what I'm trying to do in my films - control the world but also let it be chaotic, let there be life.
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I think people need fantasy, but I think they also need to know that they're not being lied to. I think sometimes the fantasy can betray people and become more difficult for people's lives than just truth. I can't stand delusion. Delusion makes me sick.
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When I grew up, a director was Cecil B DeMille, a guy sitting down with a megaphone speaking. He was the voice of God, the image of God. When I went to start making docs, I quickly turned the megaphone to my ear not to my mouth. It's more about funneling in the words and listening as doc filmmaker.
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There's this thing in Hollywood about the sympathetic character and likability. I've never understood that because the people I love most in my life are not likable all the time. My wife is not always likable. I'm certainly not always likable. My dad is not always likable. We're human beings.
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I shot 'Blue Valentine' on 16mm for the past, and for the present on the Red Camera. I feel that both formats are valid. The stories should dictate the format we shoot on. Filmmakers should have a choice.
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There's one rule that I have on my movies, which is that anything that you want to do, you can do. But! There's a flip side to that, which is that anything I want you to do, give it a try also.
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You turn on the news, there're no facts anymore. 'Here's what's happening today,' and then you cut to thirty minutes of people in little boxes, little windows, telling you their opinions on it. It seems like all the news is going on in the ticker-tape on the bottom of the news. It's all opinion, it's all editorial.
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Look, pain is there in the world, and there's catharsis through that. I feel like there's... a rapture, if we can get through it, if we can confront things.
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When I cast someone in a movie, I have to absolutely trust who they are as a human being. Trust is the intangible of moviemaking.
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One reason Cassavetes is a hero to me is that his movies grew with him; they reflected the stages of his life. He made movies about where he was at that time. That's what I want to do with my films.
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When I cast great actors, I try to make extraordinary people ordinary, dealing with these extremely small intimate details of interpersonal relationships against an epic backdrop.