Jonathan Demme Quotes
I've been making films since the '70s and trying to develop that best possible fiction-film style that I feel is the most expressive. At a certain point, I felt I was winding up making the same film stylistically and I found that boring.
Quotes to Explore
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It is hard to watch myself. I'm hypercritical, and it's difficult to watch a performance when I may end up being at odds with it - wishing I'd done something differently or that they had edited it a certain way.
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When you're not under a 'series regular' contract, and other jobs come up, you try to juggle everything.
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I live a half mile from the San Andreas fault - a fact that bubbles up into my consciousness every time some other part of the world experiences an earthquake. I sometimes wonder whether this subterranean sense of impending disaster is at least partly responsible for Silicon Valley's feverish, get-it-done-yesterday work norms.
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I grew up in different parts of Africa. I grew up in Mozambique and places like that. I've been in South Africa many times.
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I know someone from growing up who is in jail right now for the rest of his life, but he was one of the sweetest people I ever knew.
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I love to watch 'Chopped,' 'Jeopardy,' and 'Breaking Bad.' You can't pass up that one. Oh! One other show I love to watch is 'Suburgatory.'
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The loneliest Chinese man I ever met lived halfway up the Three Gorges, in Sichuan Province.
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Brad Pitt is a dude who just wants to make good movies. He's not afraid to surround himself with the greatest actors, which I always appreciate because I've also seen actors who only want to surround themselves with weak actors because it makes them look better. That ends up making a poorer movie.
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What Alexander Graham Bell thought up occupied less space than a flower vase. Now it's so small that I have to search all my pockets to discover I've received a spam text.
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Whenever I see a tree that is climbable, it must be climbed. Sometimes when I'm on a run, I'll just run up a tree, jump on a branch and swing off. My favorite tree, in Saratoga, gets me a good 75 feet up.
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We ought to open up energy innovation across the board and - and remove the barriers to every form of energy.
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I grew up playing video games. And the cool thing about the EA Sports games is they took me through the whole motion-capture thing, where they put little sensors on my body so the video game really is me. It actually moves the way I move.
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My biggest bits of advice are, write as much as you can, finish what you start, get a thick skin, don't take crap from anyone, but also live your life and have fun. The stereotype of a writer holed up alone all day is really unhelpful. You can't write real people and real emotion if you don't let yourself experience them.
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Life is challenging but I'm always up for a challenge.
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I sing around the house, in the shower.
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I had no interest in being an actress what so ever, and when I was about 14 or 15, I was signed to a company in England. They owned a children's TV show which they put me in as a singer, and I was on the show for three years, and I left the show when I was 18 and started looking for a record contract.
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Some actors get fired up by the sound of the audience. I just want to retreat.
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I couldn't be luckier to wake up every morning and be so excited to get to work, even if it's five in the morning.
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I had a low image of myself because I was brought up in the deep Depression.
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The insecurity that comes from being behind bars with, at best, imperfect oversight makes us all feel responsible only for ourselves. We end up either docile, apathetic, and unwilling to engage with each other, or hostile, angry, violent, and resentful.
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I tell my grandchildren - I've got seven of them - to go to college and get that degree first. I could have stayed in college and still recorded. Isn't that something? The kids of today are doing it.
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We, as a society, will benefit from the interest young people show beginning at first, second, and third grades. As a result, there's great promise in the future.
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Genius is the talent for seeing things straight.
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I've been making films since the '70s and trying to develop that best possible fiction-film style that I feel is the most expressive. At a certain point, I felt I was winding up making the same film stylistically and I found that boring.
