Michel Gondry Quotes
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Of course, from time to time, I want to do everything myself and be more involved on my own with the creative process. But I don't mind the collaboration at all.
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It's very hard to say I'm surrealist. It's like saying I'm poetic. It's not something you want necessarily to be aware of.
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I like the days when all the filmmakers had was a film roll, a camera and a gangster. The Mack Sennett comedies were all like that. They'd create little teams to go out and shoot films.
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I think some people feel that if you are going to have 3D, then you have to shoot in 3D, but they shoot 3D, so of course they're going to say 'my way of doing a film is better.' I'm not telling anyone how they should do their film, so why should anyone tell me how I should do mine?
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You cannot do everything you want with the 3D camera, it's too big, and the digital quality of those cameras is a little bit limiting. With film, you have a lot more subtly, like with highlights and color. In terms of sharpness they (both formats) are very close; but in terms of nuance, of color and contrast, film is far superior.
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My goal was to show that even if people work in a garage or a supermarket, they have very funny things to say. We never hear their voices.
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You can't feel sorry for a scene. If the movie works without the scene, then you don't need the scene.
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If people don't like the trailer, then blame it on the people who made the trailer.
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Michael Jackson will always be my favorite pop musician; he was for years and years until his death, which was horrible to me. So I like pop culture. But to me, even if it's popular, there is a quality in the music you have to be able to appreciate.
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In my opinion, it's more interesting to see magic happening in a world that feels grounded. If the world is already crazy, then anything can happen. So it's better to start with something real.
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The problem when you edit a film together, when you shoot a film, you are drawn into the moment. You want each moment to be special and full of life.
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In a way, putting actors deep into this sort of complicated universe frees them from thinking about who they should be. They just are somebody.
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That's what the internet is: it's like bombarding your eyeballs with these myriad blinking colour lights. It's like trying to watch a movie on your phone in the middle of Times Square.
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I'm always excited to work with actors.
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People always say there is competition in nature, but I think that because we are human, it's not only competition. Because we are human we have something other than competition - sharing, helping others, or being oneself. Competition is really kind of ugly.
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I had a lot of encouragement and tolerance from my parents, but I also have many friends who didn't get that from their parents and in a way they have more strength from spending years where nobody believed in them.
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I don't call cut between the takes - it's my way to help the actor keep focused. As soon as you say 'cut' you have 10 people jumping on them and everybody's trying to do a great job, and they do, but sometimes they forget that the more important thing is the performance, creating the performance.
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I'm attracted to working with comedians because they don't have that stars' idea of what a hero should be. The downside is they're always addressing the camera too much.
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Objectivity is very hard to achieve. It needs some research and patience. If you want to do something honest, you have to explore it a little longer.
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When I was young, I would stay in my backyard and I would create roads and tunnels and systems. My uncle had a sawmill, and we had all sorts of pieces of wood, and we'd create a city. I truly believe that kids enjoy the box better than the car or the toy that's inside. So many times during Christmas, watching a kid, or even myself... There is excitement toward your toy, but then you put the toy on the side and something is created with the package.
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I have a video store next to my apartment in Paris, and they still have most of their videos on VHS. A lot of people think Be Kind Rewind is set in the past because they just wipe this reality out of their head, but it is true that there are a lot of movies that don't exist on DVD. But I'm not like a big movie buff.
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I think it's a problem when journalists have the title of their article before they do the interview, because it biases the way they conduct it.
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I like to use a bit of chaos when I shoot. I think it may be something from the way I shot my first film - I was very scared, of course, and I prepared everything, I wanted to make sure that the characters did the right thing at the right time on the storyboard. But then I realised that in life, there is so much more than what you can predict or write in advance, that when you shoot the story, it's good to leave some gaps where you lose control. I think this combination of chaos and organisation gives a kind of quality.
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I don't thrive on control. I'm not looking for control. I think I get better results when I don't control things.