Brian McGinn Quotes
It's hard any time people are sitting down and looking at you across a camera and saying, "I believe that you guys will tell my story faithfully." That's getting to the core principle of being a journalist or a documentarian where people trust you with their stories.
Quotes to Explore
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If you have a camera in the courtroom, there's no filtering. What you see is what's there.
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If you're filming somebody doing something they really want to do, you're probably not very high on their list of problems to deal with. You see James Carville on the phone - he's like that whether you have a camera or not. He isn't doing it just for you, and that's hard to explain.
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I'm not a very big fan of 'Slumdog Millionaire.' I think it's visually brilliant. But I have problems with the story line. I find the storyline unconvincing.
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Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself.
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Sometimes the kids come up with better endings than the real story.
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This basic thing I always do: 'What happened between the character's birth, and page one of the script?' Anything that's not in the story, I'll fill in the blanks.
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Honestly, there are so many things about structuring a story for film and telling a story for film that are really different from doing radio.
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A lot of guys go, 'Hey, Yog, say a Yogi-ism.' I tell 'em, 'I don't know any.' They want me to make one up. I don't make 'em up. I don't even know when I say it. They're the truth. And it is the truth. I don't know.
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I never want to write a book just to tell a story. There is always something deeper going on.
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If someone put a camera in my face now, when I am in student mode, I would get embarrassed, but when I am modelling, I play characters.
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As a writer, I had learned a lot on 'Margin Call' about embracing the weaknesses of a narrative and of a project. A story always has an inherent narrative weakness.
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Genes are like the story, and DNA is the language that the story is written in.
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In the '50s, I was traveling alone all over Mindanao, Basilan, all the way to Tawi-Tawi with just a camera and a notebook. I always stayed in the houses of Moros.
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Reading a Lydia Davis story collection is like reaching into what you think is a bag of potato chips and pulling out something else entirely: a gherkin, a pepper corn, a truffle, a piece of beef jerky.
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A good story gives you more of a license to be forward and progressive with the music.
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The story of Americans is the story of arrested metamorphoses. Those who achieve success come to a halt and accept themselves as they are. Those who fail become resigned and accept themselves as they are.
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The songs I love to sing are story songs, from Yiddish songs to Tom Waits.
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When you're a storyteller, part of the process of storytelling is the kind of communion you form with the audience to whom you're telling your story. If some segment of the audience doesn't like that story, it doesn't feel good.
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A novel requires a certain kind of world-building and also a certain kind of closure, ultimately. Whereas with a short story you have this sense that there are hinges that the reader doesn't see.
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Believe it or not, in 1969 the French writer Georges Perec wrote a palindromic story that was 500 words long! The whole story reads the same backwards as forwards.
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I went to a fancy dress party as a punk. I went through a stage of being a wannabe punk from the '70s. So, my next-door neighbours were like hardcore punks and I went to see The Vibrators and came home with a T-shirt that said "The Vibrators". My mum said: "You're not going out in that!" But I was really into it. I did soon grow out of it. But that's probably the most embarrassing story I have. I really am just quite normal.
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I encourage all men - and all women who love their men - to make sure to get out every year, from the age of 50 on, and have PSA and DRE tests. With early detection, you can have an early cure.
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That's why I sleep alone. My hair is curly, and that's why I have my ponytail. I look like a madman, like something out of a horror movie.
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It's hard any time people are sitting down and looking at you across a camera and saying, "I believe that you guys will tell my story faithfully." That's getting to the core principle of being a journalist or a documentarian where people trust you with their stories.
