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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There is nothing deeper than to work for a year with the same artist.
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I'm interested in that whole question of where we wear our identity and how can we see it.
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Fifty years of isolating Cuba had failed to promote democracy, setting us back in Latin America. That's why we restored diplomatic relations, opened the door to travel and commerce, and positioned ourselves to improve the lives of the Cuban people.
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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.
