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It seems like women don't want men to be men anymore. They want men to be women. But they really don't want what they say they want. It's very weird.
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A lot of writing's going down dead ends that don't go anywhere.
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Sometimes you see a movie and you can really feel that it's an actor putting in a performance. Someone said 'cut' and they're back in their trailer having a coffee or getting their hair done.
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I don't know whether crime is dictating business or business is dictating crime.
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For me, the movie's always evolving as I'm doing it. I throw things in as we shoot, and I take things out as we go. I want to create a whole life and then select the pieces that best sort of describe it later, you know? So there's a lot of wastage when I make a film.
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America's moved so much of its production and manufacturing offshore, it's become a nation of middlemen.
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I like test screenings. I like to see a movie with an audience of strangers. I think it tells you a lot.
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Obviously, a power player in a criminal organization doesn't have to persuade anyone. He can just do what he wants.
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I always feel that crime films are about capitalism because it is a genre where it is perfectly acceptable for all the characters to be motivated by the desire for money. In some ways, the crime film is the most honest American film because it portrays Americans as I experience a lot of them, in Hollywood, as being very concerned with money.
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Actors have either got to play something that's close to them, or something that's the complete opposite.
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Once you do something violent in a film, you don't have to do too much. You do it once and the feeling of violence just stays there, do you know what I'm saying?
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In Australia, we point out a person's weaknesses as a way of saying 'I see you and I accept you'. If you do that with Americans, they instantly take offence.
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I don't think human beings have changed in 2,000 years.
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When men organize themselves into groups, and they make rules based on common or self-interest, it's always tangled and political.
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There's been about 75 movies about Jesse James, and I've seen about four of them. He's usually portrayed as this plucky rebel who's got no choice but to turn to crime, because the railway's hassling his mother. But he wasn't like that.
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Actors look for characters. If they read a well-written character, and if they think the director's not an idiot, they're going to sign up and do some acting.
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I'm not a very efficient filmmaker. There's a lot of guys, filmmakers like the Coen Brothers who shoot a whole movie and maybe don't use 12 setups. I'm in awe of people like that; I'm just not that guy.
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Americans are not renowned for having a sense of irony.
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Everybody is always trying to make the best movie they can. It's a process.
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To me, regardless of who's in office, the government is strangled by business. And the government's priorities are dictated by business. I mean, why does America, even after healthcare reform, still not have free universal healthcare? I'm sure it has something to do with the insurance lobby.
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Anything that's memorable about a movie is often what a test audience will object to because they're being asked to be experts. They just compare the film they finished watching to all of the other films that they've seen.
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Films that score very high with test audiences generally tend to not be so great. But, there's a lot of money involved in making movies, and it's a way for people to reassure themselves, who have spent money, and it's also a way to work out how to market a movie.
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I read books all the time. I'm just half looking for something to do; I mostly just read for pleasure. Occasionally I stumble across something that could be a movie, but I don't put a book down just because I don't see a movie in it, either.
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I really believed Obama when he spoke in 2008, but I remember watching his victory speech after this last election and it was the same speech. Exactly the same speech. I felt like he didn't even believe it anymore. He seemed to be tired of saying the same thing.