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Good genre movies are a little bit like trying to write a haiku. There are certain things that you have to do to fulfill the audience's expectations, but inside that, you have complete freedom to talk about whatever you want. Who wants to see a movie about gun violence in America and class? But, if you set it in this terrifying, fun, roller coaster ride of a movie, you can talk about whatever you want. That's been the game that genre movies play, when they do it well.
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Depression is a real demon in the woods for a lot of creative people, you know? It's part of what the documentary is trying to be about for me, finding balance, where the beauty that is attainable in the creative arts can be matched with the scratchy roughness of regular life.
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I did one sci-fi movie. I did 'Gattaca.' I liked 'Gattaca' because that was always the kind of science fiction I really dug, the non-action oriented sci-fi.
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My relationship to reality has been so utterly skewed for so long that I don't even notice it any more. It's just my reality.
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I meet a lot of young people that want to go into acting because they think of what it will do for them. If that's the case, it can be a very, very painful profession. But if the kids want to do acting because they love it, and they want to give to it, then they can have a great life. It's really about as simple as how you look at it.
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I take pleasure in the little things. Double cheeseburgers, those are good, the sky ten minutes before it rains,the moment your laugh turns into a cackle. And I sit here, and smoke my Camel straights, and I ride my own melt.
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Read. It makes you more intelligent. It’s that simple. We all see the universe through the tiny keyhole of our own eyes, and every book is another keyhole from which you can gaze.
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It's interesting to work with Emma Watson so quickly after Harry Potter. When we shot this movie, it wasn't that long after Harry Potter was finished, and it's knowing that's a big transition in her life. She's a very talented young woman.
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It's difficult to make any kind of action movie that might be unique or worth watching.
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It's so hard for every young person, trying to figure out the adult you want to be.
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We're fascinated by things that scare us, and one of the things that scares us is violence. Violence exists. It's a real part of our lives. We are obsessed with what we're scared of, but it certainly doesn't define us.
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Well, there's a great Marlon Brando quote that to do something well you have to spiritually marry your director. You have to be making the same movie they are in that you have to try to help their imagination be better, and more full, and more fully realized, but you can't have a different imagination because then you end up - and you see this a lot in movies - where it feels like they were making five different films.
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It was never in my dreams to make my personal life anybody else's business.
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I met a lot of famous people when I was about 24. And none of them seemed very appealing. And so I didn't know why I would struggle to be that kind of person.
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There's this kind of incredibly mistaken idea that because it's so much cheaper to roll the camera than it used to be and it's so much easier to accumulate a ton of footage, that then you can just go shoot a ton of footage and the editor will make sense out of it. But if you don't have something deliberate made, you're not gonna save it in the editing room.
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My process differs... my process for a Richard Linklater film is very different than a process for Training Day.
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The Woodstock Film festival is among the finest of a dying breed: a festival that isn’t trying to sell you anything, but simply and beautifully celebrating the art & craft of filmmaking.
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I started acting when I was 13 years old and I feel like I really admire actors who are these kind of amazing shape-changing people, that they almost can turn themselves into other people.
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Success isn't measured by what you achieve, it's measured by the obstacles you overcome.
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The drones are really interesting - how have the troops withdrawn from Afghanistan? Because we've upped the drone strikes and most of the country doesn't even really know what that means or who we're killing or... it's such a new weapon that we don't know what the long term impacts of that kind of military action is going to be.
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We all have this fantasy of finding our one true love who's going to be the perfect fit. It's just not a reality.
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I feel like everyone I meet is an imaginary friend. I don't know. The older I get the more I wonder what's real.
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Most of us float with the river and there are a few people who move the river. Robert DeNiro is definitely one of them.
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I have a daughter and the thing I wish for her is not love, fame, money or anything like that. It's just one great best friend. You know, if you have somebody that has your back, you're gonna be all right.