Bennett Miller Quotes
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As a filmmaker, you want people to understand and get what you do, and it's a lot to ask for.
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I like to rehearse. We did a lot of rehearsals for 'Moneyball,' but it is really individual to the actor. It's not like, 'Here is my process, everybody. Fit in.'
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If you find yourself considering a project that seems like a layup, then you're diluted, or that movie's probably not the right movie for you to be making.
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I am nostalgic for those man-behind-the-curtain days when someone could get away with impersonating Kubrick because nobody had any idea what Kubrick looked like.
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I think, when I meet a person, in general, it's not my habit to conclude anything about people. Not completely. Even people you know well constantly remain open.
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I'm attracted to stories of people who don't belong together, who embark on something and find themselves in places they don't belong.
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I don't know of a filmmaker who does not feel buoyed and lifted when their peers embrace the work.
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I do have that compulsion to organize moments into a larger thing.
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People are attracted to entertainment, for sure, or jokes, excitement and romantically heightened stories that might be false, but are still attractive fantasies.
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The silence of a room when someone enters with a gun is very different from the sound that room makes when empty.
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It couldn't be more satisfying to work on something almost anonymously for years, then to have it received affectionately with support.
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I don't have many rules, but one of them is, 'Do not make a movie you yourself would not want to see.'
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If you track something like a political campaign and parcel out what's being communicated in a literal and narrative sense, and what's being communicated by means of emotional and symbolic language, you might find that it's the latter elements that absolutely dominate and move people. It makes me want to take that language and expose it.
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I'm not going to take something based on budget and do something just for the sake of it. I want to make good films.
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You make a movie and you'd like it to be appreciated, respected, embraced.
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The version of 'Moneyball' I pitched - and we made - is about a guy, Billy Beane, who thinks he's trying to win baseball games. But it's deeper than that.
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It's about creating an atmosphere so that characters can just live in front of the cameras. And to be sensitive, and for the actor to know the sensitivity that they are being observed with.
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Mark Ruffalo is Mark Ruffalo - no explanation needed. He has the biggest heart of anyone I've ever met, and he's sort of the Dave Schultz of the entertainment industry.
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As a filmmaker, one tends to want to evolve evermore towards a place of independence.
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You can recognize almost immediately if the film you're watching is the product of some kind of a hive mind or the result of a personal vision and genuine collaborations. 'Manchester by the Sea' reminds us of the potential of the latter and, for that reason, is the kind of work that makes me, as a filmmaker, want to continue. It's inspiring.
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A lot of the time, excess on a film set is just damaging.
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I'm interested in telling stories that add up to more than the entertainment of the story. That's what does it for me.
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Film as a medium, like a novel as a medium, possesses a unique ability to communicate. Film is capable of communicating in a way that no other medium can, and I would say the same for the novel.
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If something is to be quietly powerful, it requires more balance than a film that allows for more freneticism.