Ira Sachs Quotes
-
I came to N.Y.C. in 1988 and got very involved with Act Up. I also started making movies, including two very gay shorts, 'Vaudeville' and 'Lady.' It was the height of the AIDS epidemic, and New York City was both dying and very alive at the same time.
-
I always think of my films within the context of where aesthetics meet economics. That's the nature of making art - not being naive about what is possible and getting what you need to tell the story you want to tell.
-
I don't think I'd ever start making a film until I had both the intimacy with the subject and the distance to make it live in a certain way.
-
It's easy to make a film, but it's hard to make a career of being a filmmaker.
-
You can be aware of the passing of time without being nostalgic.
-
I've been close to two or three couples, gay and straight, who have been together for 45 years.
-
Being an artist is in part an act of rupture.
-
Secrets make for good drama, and revealing the hidden truths and contradictions of life is, for me, one of the most exciting aspects of making movies.
-
I could not - and I still cannot - see a sustainable career as a filmmaker in which I focus fully on our gay stories.
-
Fighting bitterness can be a full-time job.
-
By 1988, I was living in New York myself.
-
I've made four films about the destructive nature of relationships, of secrets and lies, and I think I'm no longer interested in that subject - which is a wonderful relief.
-
Capturing intimacy is pretty much the only thing I'm interested in. That's what excites me and what I find beautiful in movies personally – that almost obscene sense that we shouldn't be this close to these people. I find that very inviting and meaningful as an audience member.
-
I've been hiding crucial events in my life since I was 13.
-
Every film is hard to fund.
-
I don't rehearse with my actors... the first rehearsal is the first time we turn the camera on... Sydney Pollack never rehearsed his actors, and I found out that's allowed... so you film reactions; you don't create them.
-
I think it's interesting: What is the generational effect of the experience of being a gay person in America? For my generation, it was very difficult.
-
A lot of what I think I do as a director is try to give everything over to the actor. So I disappear.
-
Movies are romantic fantasies.
-
I think there's a fear of difference in American cinema.
-
As a gay person, my life has been marginalized.
-
As a filmmaker, you realize that places have character based on their history as much as a face does or an actor does.
-
I'm not interested in a film about deceit anymore. I think I was always invested in deceit on some level. But it no longer compels me the way it did for so many years.
-
I got into filmmaking in order to tell very personal stories, and in this day and age, the opportunity seems all the more precious.