Kevin Macdonald Quotes

When we made 'Life in a Day,' we asked people around the globe to record their lives on a single ordinary day. When we were cutting that film, we talked about what it might be like if we chose a day that already had significance to people. The result is 'Christmas in a Day.'

Kevin Macdonald

• People
• Life
• Single
• Cutting
• Christmas

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Quotes to Explore

• As a filmmaker, I'm interminably curious and nosy, but certain times you meet people and think, 'I don't want to push you too hard because I can see this is painful for you.'

  

  Kevin Macdonald
  • People

• I'm not particularly ethnically Scottish; I have one grandfather who is Scottish, although he's called Macdonald, and you don't get a lot more Scottish than that. The Scottish part of my family are from Skye, and I've always been very aware of that - always been very attracted to Scottish subject matter, I guess.

  

  Kevin Macdonald
  • Family

• Coming from documentaries, my biggest challenge was to understand actors' psychologies. American actors take it all very seriously; British actors don't enter into all this methody way of doing things.

  

  Kevin Macdonald
  • American
  • Challenge

• I recommend to any of you, that's always a good way to make a film: use the interesting bits.

  

  Kevin Macdonald
  • Good
  • Interesting

• I suppose that I'm easily bored.

  

  Kevin Macdonald
  • Bored

• I like to take a little of what I learned in fiction and apply it to documentary and vice versa.

  

  Kevin Macdonald

• The relationship between director and subject can become very intense. It's a bit like therapy, with lots of transferences going on. It's easy to feel guilty.

  

  Kevin Macdonald
  • Relationship
  • Guilty

• Young people read their news online; they expect to get their news for free.

  

  Kevin Macdonald
  • People
  • Free

• The first documentary I saw that tried to show the actual experience of being a soldier in combat was 'The Anderson Platoon,' by French director Pierre Schoendoerffer, which won the Oscar for best documentary in 1967.

  

  Kevin Macdonald
  • Experience
  • Soldier

• I'm a cynical person who's normally attracted to the dark side of things.

  

  Kevin Macdonald
  • Dark

• I don't think of myself particularly as a Scottish director, but you are what you are because the first ten years of your life, and where you spend them, brand you. In that sense, I'll always be a Scottish director.

  

  Kevin Macdonald
  • Life

• Elvis Presley's estate is making 30 million a year, and they say that Marley shouldn't be, but he is from a much poorer part of the world, and a lot more people need the money.

  

  Kevin Macdonald
  • People
  • World
  • Money

• It's obviously presumptuous in some ways to talk about somebody's sexuality who's not here to describe themselves.

  

  Kevin Macdonald

• You can relate to someone with a flaw.

  

  Kevin Macdonald

• The Internet has meant that advertising has migrated; there are hardly any classifieds in newspapers any more because they're all online. If people have a car to sell, for example, they sell it online; they don't go to the newspaper.

  

  Kevin Macdonald
  • People
  • Car

• Sometimes people give away more by not saying something.

  

  Kevin Macdonald
  • People

• John Lennon made wonderful music, which people listen to as music. Nobody around the world is living their life according to the precepts of John Lennon.

  

  Kevin Macdonald
  • People
  • Life
  • World

• It's interesting to me that the Arab Spring started in Tunisia, and in the marches, people were singing 'Get up, stand up, stand up for your rights.'

  

  Kevin Macdonald
  • People
  • Up
  • Interesting

• Documentary makers use other people's lives as their raw material, and that is morally indefensible.

  

  Kevin Macdonald
  • People

• I always loved digging away at the story, trying to find out things that people don't want you to find out and piecing it all together. I love the treasure hunt aspect of it, the thrill of the chase.

  

  Kevin Macdonald
  • People
  • Trying
  • Together

• It feels like we're all so familiar now with the traditional three-act structure that, actually, stories that are more complex, more naughty, that allow for disagreement and discussion, are more interesting to us.

  

  Kevin Macdonald
  • Interesting
  • Naughty

• In film, I believe things should either be documentary or drama.

  

  Kevin Macdonald
  • Believe
  • Drama

• When you look at almost every submarine movie, to some degree or another, there's this 'Moby Dick' element, this Ahab element to them.

  

  Kevin Macdonald
  • Movie

• You can go to places in Africa and Asia and find Marley graffiti. In the slums of Nairobi, you see his lyrics painted on walls, and you realise he has this almost religious significance to the underclass of the world. He's a guy born in a hut with no bed, and now he's probably the most listened-to artist in the world. It's fascinating.

  

  Kevin Macdonald
  • World
  • Guy
  • Religious