Curtis Hanson Quotes
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I was a journalist and wrote about filmmakers, but I didn't review movies per se.
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I grew up as a reader as well as a movie-lover, so many of the novelists I admired - and so many of the great filmmakers I loved - were self-taught.
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Pittsburgh has this rich industrial past, when it was the heart of the U.S. steel industry, and it burned out as the industry burned out and moved elsewhere.
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I don't think of the marketplace as teen-oriented or teen-dominated. I think of it as dominated by high-concept, in marketing especially.
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Initially, it connected with me when I was a kid, seeing a lot of movies while growing up in Los Angeles. And Sam's [Fuller] pictures are an expression of such a distinct voice that he was one of those filmmakers who made me aware that there was, in fact, a real presence behind the camera that was telling the story, as opposed to actors just presenting it.
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I make that distinction only because I came to it strictly as someone who was just a lover of storytellers and cinematic storytellers.
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Now, grosses are listed in the newspapers and on television like it's a sporting event. It's ridiculous, because when you're watching a movie, unless you're an investor in the movie or a stockholder in the studio, what do you care how much it's grossing or how much it cost or any of that stuff?
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You can imagine what it was like for me to actually be sitting in a room with matching typewriters, working under the tutelage of this guy I so admired, both as a filmmaker and as a man.
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On a personal note, a legacy he left me, aside from being a friend who was important to me on many levels, was that the decades I knew Sam [Fuller] happened to be the decades that were his least happy professionally.
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Rob Lowe, who I thought was really good in the movie [ Bad Influence], had his performance overshadowed by this sort of tabloid approach to him and the movie.
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I had written the script a few years earlier for Paramount, then later got hired with Sam [Fuller] to write an entirely new script that he was going to direct. And that was one of the great thrills of my professional life.
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His [Sam Fuller] self-discipline was amazing. No matter what happened, he'd always go out to his Royal Upright typewriter and just keep working on his stories, his "yarns" as he called them.
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First of all, Sam Fuller left a group of extraordinary movies that are unique, that are "Fuller-esque," as one might say, which makes them stand apart from any other director's films.
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What you care about [movie] is whether it's moving you, or whether you're caught up in it.
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Consequently, it's so gratifying to then make a picture that's successful and gives you leverage to have better circumstances than you've ever had, before the next time out.
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I had the great fortune to actually become friends with Sam [Fuller] and ultimately collaborate with him on White Dog, which we wrote together.
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Consequently, pictures are aimed at certain audiences, whether it be a teen comedy or an action movie or whatever. It's unfortunate, because while it may lead to big opening grosses, a lot of pictures that are a little different and don't fit so neatly into either a niche market or a high-concept marketing approach can get lost in the shuffle. That's one unfortunate thing.
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What I try to do is give each actor an environment in which they can do their best work.
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It was just a wonderful experience, one for the memory book for sure. The sad thing about it was that the picture came under this absurd cloud of controversy. Here was a movie based on the central theme that racism is something that is taught, and it's illustrated by this story of a dog and the efforts of humans to re-train it after it had been trained to go after black people. And it created this ridiculous controversy and wound up being the last Hollywood movie that Sam [Fuller] made.
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I was never a critic.
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Of course, Sam [Fuller] was like, "No problem," because he treated it like a newspaper deadline. We worked long hours, often very late into the night, in his garage, which had been converted into an office. It was freezing cold outside and there was no heat in the garage, so he had a little space heater over by his side and I had a blanket that he graciously gave me to drape around my shoulders like a Navajo Indian. And he gave me cigars, too, of course.
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When I'm casting a picture, I think who I'd like to see in it if I was sitting in a theater. Who would surprise me?
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That's what I love about Michael Douglas' performance in Wonder Boys, because I feel like he surprises audiences that know him from very different roles in his other work.
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Whereas to write, all you need is paper and an idea, so I felt that writing might be my stepping stone.