Jeff Nichols Quotes
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I think plot is very overrated. Plot is obviously necessary, but what I really care about is emotionally affecting the audience. Having a thought myself and then an emotional experience myself, somehow transferring that to the audience.
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I care about narrative structure; I care about how stories unfold.
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My first job in the film business was working as a production assistant, and then a production manager on a documentary about Townes Van Zandt.
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There's a rhythm and a cadence in a scene, and when an actor understands without any real direction from you, then that's a very valuable gift. And some people get it, and some people don't.
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I think we're so advanced when it comes to watching narrative material. I mean, it's all we do is consume content all day long. So when a character walks onscreen, you immediately start making connections for that character: Is that a good guy? Is that a bad guy?
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I know how to write a movie. I know how to direct a movie.
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A lot of independent filmmakers are really catty.
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When I saw the scene in 'Close Encounters,' and Richard Dreyfuss's son is screaming at him - that's a heartbreaking scene. And I remember being devastated by 'E.T.' Or when E.T. started to get sick. That broke me up a little bit.
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Most film productions, when they're based at a place, they get, like, a 30-mile radius or a 30-minute radius to get out of the town. And once you go past that, your day starts to become shorter, and you have to start paying your drivers more, and everybody just gets paid more, and you have less time to shoot, and everything costs more.
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I had two DVDs my junior year. One was 'Fletch' and one was 'Goodfellas,' and I watched those movies so much. I just remember eating Ramen noodles and watching 'Goodfellas.'
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You can watch any Hitchcock film and be blown away.
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Making movies is really hard. It's a very complex process, with many, many variables.
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Whenever I write, I try and approach my stories from some kind of universal theme or idea or emotion.
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If I can drive down the road in my car and listen to XM satellite, and when a song gets beamed into my car, it can tell me who wrote the song and what the damn lyrics are, why, when you broadcast a digital signal of a film, can't it speak to your television to set up a list of settings to show the film in the way that it was meant to be shown?
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'Midnight Special' is, like 'Starman', a government chase film - in the government chase film genre - about a boy who has special powers and the government agents' quest to find him.
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You have actors you've worked with previously, and you have actors you haven't worked with that you've seen in things where you know they can work in these parts. And then there are actors who blow you away, who surprise you.
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I want all of my films to be grounded in reality, and I think 'Midnight Special' is the most grounded film I've ever made, in spite of its genre.
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We have a problem with dealing with race in our country. We have a problem with dealing with marriage equality and equality in general. These are complex, divisive issues in our society, and I think that the only way we further this conversation is to take them down to a very human scale.
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I wrote 'Mud' for Matthew McConaughey and had never met him.
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With 'Midnight Special,' the sound was used as a narrative construct. The audience is looking in one direction when a sound suddenly erupts from the other direction.
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I'm not as worried about the process of writing, simply because I think I've got that one down, you know? I think I know what brings specificity to these ideas, what brings specificity to the genre elements, or anything else, and it's personal emotions.
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The funny thing about 'Take Shelter' is that a lot of people talk about how it was allegory for the economy and things that were to happen. And that was so on the nose in the movie for me. I was like, 'That's obvious.' It's the other stuff about marriage and commitment and those other things that I spent the most time thinking about.
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I am not going to approve the home-screening format for my film just carte blanche in lieu of a theatrical screening when I cannot trust that it will ever be seen in the format that it's intended to be.
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I love 'Lawrence of Arabia,' big sweeping films. I want my films to feel that way, to be on a big canvas.