Jeff Nichols Quotes
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I've been really lucky when it comes to casting kids, and I don't particularly like child actors. Too often, they just show up, and they've had whatever real innocence that's in a child just beaten out of them. They start to perform for you, and you can just see it coming. It's no good.
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There's one right place to put the camera. I'm a big believer in that. You'd think you could put it anywhere. Nope.
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As a director, you see something in someone; you know it's there, you just got to go get it. You do that with any actor. That's your job.
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'Mud' was a depository for a little more nostalgia and just a different kind of feeling, a different kind of mood. Something that's not so dark. Something that does actually have a happy ending and is a little more hopeful.
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I have a very linear mind.
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I loved, in 'Starman', the use of anamorphic lenses, the creation of blue light, and Carpenter's use of the widescreen format.
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I've only seen one snake out in the wilderness, not behind glass, and I froze. I literally couldn't move. So to say I have a fear of snakes would be true.
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Steven Spielberg had a tremendous influence on me through his early stuff. 'E.T.', 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' - 'Jaws,' I think, is one of the most beautifully directed films ever.
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I think I could probably make $5 to $10m movies for a very long time and live a perfectly good life doing it. I'd probably get paid as well as a surgeon, which is pretty damn remarkable for a guy who went to film school.
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I'm really calculating when it comes to these scripts - I'm really calculated about character behavior and dialogue.
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My connection to 'Aquaman' came out through the Sony hack. It had no relationship to reality. I was not on that film. I was not hired to work on that film. I had been talking to Warner Bros. about it.
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My characters aren't chess pieces. I don't move them around some big board. I actually care about these fictitious people.
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The films that have influenced me most are: 'The Hustler', 'Badlands', 'Hud', 'Tender Mercies', 'Cool Hand Luke', 'A Perfect World', and 'Laurence of Arabia'. I also really like 'Fletch'. I feel like all of these films reached an honest place in regard to the human condition while also stringing together really entertaining stories.
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In terms of my personal spirituality and everything else, it's ever-evolving. I have a desire to want more out of the universe. But the older I get, the further I get from any specifics about that.
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There's a reason why I use film. It's because it's the best representation of how our eyes work. I really believe that. I think it's better than digital.
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A lot of people have a belief system that is strictly based on religious dogma.
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I think when you're talking about marriage equality and race, people very quickly start to get into their political corners: their ideology comes to the forefront, and they get into this platform argument that they're used to making, which really doesn't have anything to do with the day-to-day basics of what is being talked about.
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It took me a year just to edit 'Shotgun Stories.' Actually, it took me two years to edit 'Shotgun Stories.'
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I haven't seen 'Room' yet. People tell me 'Room' is such an amazing film, but ever since I had a kid, I just can't. I can't do it. It's not fun. It's not a place I want to be.
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There are great advantages of making things on the independent market. There's freedom and control there, and kind of a cleanness to the process that I like.
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Your whole life is changed with that first child. Your social behaviors are all turned upside down, you're sleep deprived, but eight months in, my son had this seizure, and it just woke me up to the idea that, oh, no, this can end. And it can end in a way that will destroy you forever.
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Marriage isn't about a collection of scenes over ten years of two people telling each other that they love each other. It's about commitment.
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My characters are not thinking about the act breaks. They're thinking about what they need to do to move forward. As long as I focus on that, the story starts to progress. As soon as I think, 'We're 20 pages in, something better blow up,' we're in trouble.
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I never wanted to make movies just for me. I want to make movies that people watch.