Jeff Baena Quotes
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I don't try to make actors play crazy characters. I like where there's a certain element of who they are and truth to their performances.
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For us, when we think about the Middle Ages, it's sort of this rarefied, distant time that we have no connection to, especially if you grew up in America.
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You show a movie to your friends when you're working on it, but you don't have any real objectivity. You just don't know. So that moment when it's shown for the very first time at Sundance, it's just terrifying. I'm so anxious. And then every screening is different.
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It's so rare when marketing and press doesn't ruin your movie.
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In Judaism, the temple was the most holy site in the world. But if you extend that argument as a metaphor, and you say 'The world is a holy place,' and you're treating this holy place like a money-lending psycho, then Jesus says, 'This is hypocrisy!' and he'd point it out and flip it over.
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I grew up in suburbia, so it's a world I'm familiar with... but in my experience, all the families that I grew up thinking were the perfect families who kept it together... all their secrets would come out, and it'd be something dark and disgusting beneath the surface, so I wanted to exploit that.
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I don't know if it's because my sensitivity is through the roof, but I can't stand contrived dialogue anymore.
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After doing 'Life After Beth,' which I think had one line that wasn't scripted, everything was scripted so that it sounds natural, and I went to such great lengths to create dialogue and to come across the way that people wouldn't sound like they were on the nose.
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When you are a writer, the assist-to-turnover ratio... there are a lot more turnovers than assists.
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My pet peeve is when people criticize things when they're just trying to have a conversation.
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I was reading a lot of Jacques Derrida at the time, writing 'Beth.' He actually talked about zombies.
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I wanted to do something a little bit more feminine after my second movie, 'Joshy,' which was so masculine.
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I hate when people eat food and talk with their mouth full. I always cover my mouth when I eat, but I've had it where there's little bologna bits flying on your food.
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'Motherwort.' 'Great Leopard's Bane.' These are awesome band names.
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When you have new people coming in and you sort of want to show them the ropes, it's always easier to have people that know the process and are able to sort of just do their thing, and then everyone can kind of follow their lead.
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You can't avoid being an egotistical person and ultimately somewhat narcissistic. You can try to curb it by recognizing that behavior. But at the same time, your repetitive behavior has its own psychology, and it's impossible to get out of that.
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Zombies sort of typify this ambiguity, that they're not dead and not alive.
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I went to film school; I went to NYU film school.
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If it feels like you're aiming for something too familiar, and you're not having a primary new experience, then what's the point of making that movie? It's been done before, so try to find something new out of it.
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I usually just do, like, studio jobs, re-writes and stuff.