Lenny Abrahamson Quotes
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I did go to cheder and was a bar mitzvah. We were members of an Orthodox synagogue, although we were not religious. My grandfather was Polish. He came to Ireland in the '30s.
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I went to Poland for the Warsaw Film Festival, and it was quite an intense experience. I didn't think it would be, but it did feel quite emotional to go back to this place I'd heard so much about.
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Delusion is not good; better to be realistic and then surprise yourself if you're lucky.
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I think people like to have their categories clear. They want to know if it's fiction or fact, biopic or not.
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I don't think of myself as doing good works. It's not, 'Oh, I must give these poor people a voice.'
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'Room' is a very subtly-made film, and directing awards tend to go to the flashier stuff, but it's the Director's section of the academy that make the decision, so I'm very proud they can see something in what I directed and wanted to reward it.
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I was a bachelor for a long time, and I got into all these really lazy habits work-wise. I'd just work as long as I wanted into the night. There was no structure.
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I've never worked in the U.K. television industry, but my guess it that it's a tough world for directors.
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As a small kid, I had this huge desire to be thought of as really clever.
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If you're in Hollywood, with no track record, it's pretty odds-on that you can get swamped and overwhelmed by the sheer scale of it all; particularly with the intense commercial push that you feel there.
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After 'Adam and Paul,' I had offers from American agents, but I think I would have been swallowed up.
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That's the way life is: meaning is always there, but there is no clearly given way of decoding it. Conventional cinema obscures this with an easy reduction of meaning to plot and schematic characters.
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I think digital is getting so much better. It's harder and harder to make the argument now for film. All things being equal, though, I still prefer to capture on film.
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Cinema at its best can express something of the pure irreducible fact of things.
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Most of my work has been independent movies outside the mainstream system.
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Generally speaking, the misfit's story is easier to tell.
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I wanted to make films that were culturally relevant in my own country, that challenged people, and that people talked about.
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Hollywood is probably the most active centre of film-making in the world, but it's also a very difficult place in which to find your voice... It was also a far more civilised industry in Ireland.
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There's a fashion for a macho style of filmmaking. How long can your longest take be? And shooting things in one shot. For me, if you can sort of disappear and make people feel that they are there, that involves massive amounts of work.
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When I'm shooting, it averages out at a 16-hour day. You have two deadlines everyday - lunch and wrap.
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I'm a bit of a late developer, generally. But the good thing about being a filmmaker is you still count as young all the way through your 40s.
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I'm a big fan of American vaudeville and Hollywood silent film-era slapstick and the music halls full of ridiculous, eccentric characters.
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Films should have the capacity to bring you into another world.
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The title, the name Frank, comes from this extraordinary British character Frank Friedbottom. He was very big in Britain in the '80s, but I, as an Irish kid, saw him on 'Top of the Charts.'