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The things that are more my own style are something that I don't really have to think about. The only time I have to think about them is if I want to force myself not to do it the way I do it.
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There's no story if there isn't some conflict. The memorable things are usually not how pulled together everybody is. I think everybody feels lonely and trapped sometimes. I would think it's more or less the norm.
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the one thing I've observed over the years is the best way to get an actor to not want to play a certain role is to offer it to them. That makes them say, "Well, maybe it's not that good. These guys don't want me to do this..."
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Animating is a very slow, pain-staking process and the animators become the actors at that point.
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I just want to make films that are personal, but interesting to an audience.
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When you finish work, practically everybody in that place is going to watch a movie at night anyway. They're tired. They have dinner. They go up to their room. They're watching TV.
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Some of the ideas are kind of inspired by the songs, and I always want to use music to tell the story and give the movie a certain kind of mood. That's always essential to me.
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My experience with casting children is that... the whole movie is going to rest on their shoulders, so you have to set aside time and wait for the perfect people to appear.
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I just now put Robert Altman down feeling heartbroken but happily and deeply inspired. . . . Wonderful.
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And I wanted to do a movie Moonrise Kingdom about a childhood romance - a very powerful experience of childhood romance. About what it's like to just be blindsided, when you're in fifth grade or sixth grade, by these kinds of feelings. Along the way, I sort of mixed in some interest in "young adult fantasy" writing.
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With each movie I have a different set of inspirations.
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I chose philosophy because it sounded like something I ought to be interested in. I didn't know anything about it, I didn't even know what it was talking about. What I really spent my time doing in those years was writing short stories. There were all sorts of interesting courses, but what I really wanted to do was make stories one way or another.
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Working with kids is usually very fun. They get so into movie and they're up for anything. Usually they're having such an exciting experience, everybody feels that.
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I have always wanted to work in the theater. I've always felt the glamour of being backstage and that excitement, but I've never actually done it - not since I was in 5th grade, really. But I've had many plays in my films. I feel like maybe theater is a part of my movie work.
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Anytime I make a movie, I really have absolutely no idea how it's going to go over. I've had the whole range of different kinds of reactions.
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I will say that Edward Norton, who plays the scout master, would be a first-rate Eagle Scout. He's got all those techniques. If your plane crashes into the jungle somewhere, he would be the guy you would want to have with you.
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When you're doing a live-action movie, you have your day set up and you're going to do this shot and this shot, and eventually the sun is going to go down. It's a sequential race to whatever is going to end the day.
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The movies I make tend not to be quite reality but the characters are inspired by real people and they're always very personal.
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India is a place where one of the great pleasures for a foreigner is that you're constantly surprised. Everywhere you look is something that is either funny, or very moving, but there is always so much that is so unexpected.
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I would like to do a movie in space, but I think it would be difficult to do it on location.
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Usually when I'm making a movie, what I have in mind first, for the visuals, is how we can stage the scenes to bring them more to life in the most interesting way, and then how we can make a world for the story that the audience hasn't quite been in before.
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People seem to think that my movies are so carefully coordinated and arranged - and in a lot of ways, they are - but every single time I make a movie, I feel that every director makes these choices. You make choices about your script, you make choices about your actors, and how you're going to stage it, and how you're going to shoot it, and what the costumes are going to be like, and in every single detail, you make that decision. And for me, what ends up happening is, I wind up surprised at the combination of all these ingredients. It never is anything like what I expected.
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What happened to your hand? It got hit by a mirror. How'd that happen? I lost my temper at myself.
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Mostly with commercial work, it isn't about personal vision. It's not a personal effort, it's work for hire. That's more my attitude with those. You just want to be a professional worker.