-
How does one endure in a place they shouldn't be condemned to live in? You could take that same question and apply it to any number of neighborhoods in any number of cities.
-
To get a film in Cannes is a real honor. To have it play and not get booed is a real relief.
-
I'm a storyteller, and I was an actor, so I have a fairly thin grip on reality to begin with.
-
I let characters be human and flawed and relatable.
-
I think that marriage of music and picture is so vital, especially in a film that's almost exclusively exteriors.
-
I'm not the guy to ask to write a sequel.
-
I had to push exposition through dialogue, which is really, really hard for an actor do.
-
I think I was a decent actor, but it took a lot of work for me to make a choice on how to read a line.
-
I finished 'Hell or High Water' and started writing 'Wind River' literally the next day.
-
I sent 'Hell or High Water' to Peter Berg, asking if he'd like to be involved.
-
I watched a lot of old movies. Clint Eastwood movies, a lot of John Wayne films, a lot of movies that celebrated the region of where I lived.
-
For me, the greatest thing a movie can do is rivet you while you're watching but also give you something to chew on for days and weeks after you've seen it.
-
I believe in the Constitution - and I believe in common sense.
-
Some of the most fascinating scenes in 'Unforgiven,' for me, is that scene with Gene Hackman where he's talking about the Duke of Death that Richard Harris played, and he's basically demolishing this myth of this man very unwesternly – not what you expect in a western.
-
I don't write tracking shots in my screenplays or any camera directions, but I do try to give a sense of how the action is moving.
-
In 2011, I was in Hollywood peddling 'Sicario' to constant and resounding 'no's. Texas was suffering the worst drought on record. Wildfires spread across West Texas, burning some 4 million acres and 3,000 homes. While the urban centers in Texas were experiencing an economic boom, West Texas was collapsing under the weight of drought and fires.
-
Part of our job as storytellers is to show people pockets of the world that they don't know. The more we understand, the more we don't judge.
-
The movies I make - the goal isn't a mass audience. They're not expensive films. So the attempt is to reach a much more limited audience - one would say an audience that enjoys films that challenge them emotionally and intellectually.
-
It's very hard for me to go to the movies because I know all the tricks, and I know everybody. I don't watch many at all. And the ones I do watch are generally much older films.
-
Whether we can call 'Hell or High Water' this rogue buddy bank-heist movie, it's also a meditation on assimilation and failure and what happens when someone loses their purpose.
-
I don't know if I've ever met anyone that's purely good or purely evil myself. I think most of us live with some varying degrees between the two.
-
I didn't know if I could make a good movie. But I knew I could make a respectful one.
-
I can recognize a good actor. I can recognize someone that can convey emotion and that has the essence and not get lost in the minutia of, 'Well, that person's got red hair, and so does the other.' Some of the decisions in casting that seem so important at the time, until you get on set and you're starting to shoot.
-
The machine of awards season is very stressful. But this is the Oscars! It's your peers, your heroes, people you admire, the people who inspired you to get into this work in the first place. It's a pretty overwhelming feeling when you think about it.