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'Pleasantville' seems tonally ambitious, but it can handle a wide breadth of tone because it's so fanciful.
Gary Ross -
What works about fairy tales is that they endure, and the great thing about fairy tales is that you can explore big, epic things that you can't really explore in other situations.
Gary Ross
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I wasn't going to make a slick, glossy over-produced piece of entertainment because then I would be doing what the Capitol did. Then I'm actually putting on the Hunger Games and not making a movie of the 'Hunger Games.'
Gary Ross -
I loved making 'The Hunger Games' - it was the happiest experience of my professional life. Lionsgate was supportive of me in a manner that few directors ever experience in a franchise: they empowered me to make the film I wanted to make and backed the movie in a way that requires no explanation beyond the remarkable results.
Gary Ross -
I mean, the wonderful thing about writing a book is that you're getting a finished product at the end of the day. You're communicating directly with the reader.
Gary Ross -
Family entertainment is really very necessary in our culture. Look how profitable they are. It's almost not discretionary. You need to take your family to the movies.
Gary Ross -
I think movies do play a valuable role in turning people on to the act of reading. I think that phenomenon just creates readers. At first they're going to love 'Harry Potter,' or they may love 'The Hunger Games,' but after that, they're going to love the act of reading and wonder, 'What else can I read?'
Gary Ross -
I love 'Chaplin'; I mean I really love 'Chaplin.' I just think there's a grace and an elegance that's almost never been matched.
Gary Ross
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It's interesting – in 'Fail Safe,' as well, they didn't back off. We were raised with kind of this spectrum of that Armageddon and lived under it, so those were probably the films. 'Fail Safe' sort of haunted me.
Gary Ross -
I think the CG is an instrument to create reality. I don't think it's an instrument to create a heightened reality.
Gary Ross -
I mean, what is racism? Racism is a projection of our own fears onto another person. What is sexism? It's our own vulnerability about our potency and masculinity projected as our need to subjugate another person, you know? Fascism, the same thing: People are trying to untidy our state, so I legislate as a way of controlling my environment.
Gary Ross -
People who want to be a star get their teeth capped. People who want to be an actor get to work.
Gary Ross -
My '50s were different than other people's '50s. The myth didn't permeate our world, 'Donna Reed' and all that. I longed for that, I wanted to be like other normal families on TV.
Gary Ross -
'Dr. Strangelove' was and is one of my favorite movies ever, and I just can't believe they actually blew up the world after that.
Gary Ross
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I love design-based stuff. I dug it in 'Pleasantville' and dug it in 'Seabiscuit.'
Gary Ross -
Any director, if you really ask them, will tell you that the toughest thing to do is like a dinner table or a dialogue scene, because you need to keep that electricity maintained throughout the course of the film.
Gary Ross -
I tend to love actors. I was trained as an actor first so I'm drawn to actors.
Gary Ross -
You can drain the life and nuances and complexity out of things by homogenizing them to make everything harmoniously dull, flat, conflict-free, strife-free.
Gary Ross -
Obviously I love 'The Godfather' movies. I think they're phenomenal.
Gary Ross -
Now, I just made an animated movie a few years ago, 'The Tale of Desperaux', and that had twelve hundred shots in it. Twelve hundred CG shots is a pretty big plan.
Gary Ross
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Despite recent speculation in the media, and after difficult but sincere consideration, I have decided not to direct 'Catching Fire.' As a writer and a director, I simply don't have the time I need to write and prep the movie I would have wanted to make, because of the fixed and tight production schedule.
Gary Ross -
I don't understand people who dream in black and white. I just don't get it. My dreams have always been vivid color.
Gary Ross -
Really, each era has its own false nostalgia. We all put a picket fence up around something. For my generation it was the '50s, and for other generations it will be something else. Change is scary for everyone, as is complexity, contradiction, and an uncertain future.
Gary Ross -
Horseracing already has the highest mortality rate of any sport in the world per capita to the people who do it. If you crash in Nascar you still have a roll bar, and a cage, and a lot of protection. It's built to crash, but if you fall off a racehorse we all know what can happen, so it's tremendously dangerous.
Gary Ross