Andrew Dominik Quotes

Whenever you make a movie, when it's done, as a filmmaker, you never sit there and say, 'Boy, I really got that right.' It's, 'Where did I screw up?'

It's a juggernaut, yeah... but I'm not phased by making movies.

I'm a filmmaker, so I always think: When is the breaking point? Sometimes you've got to go beyond the breaking point, and then you catch it. When is long enough? It's one of those things you have to look at, walk away, and go home and find out what it is.

Often, I find it really hard to see what I'm doing when I'm in the thick of things. I can get too precious and have to force myself to put my paintings aside. There's a wall in my studio where I hang paintings that I think are done or nearly done. Over time, I'll realise which ones are working and which aren't.

Editing yourself is like an irksome coin toss. You've got to strip yourself of super ego and operate from the id. Maybe I've got my Freud mixed up. It's just hard to trade a beauty shot for the performance with truth and a brightly lit zit.

When a writer becomes a reader of his or her own work, a lot can go wrong. It's like do-it-yourself dentistry.

As a filmmaker and film student, I think it's really interesting to hear what a director did and how they figured out how to do things.

I am never really surprised at the way my books take shape. They are just not as perfect as I'd like them to be.

It's a bit embarrassing watching myself, but I couldn't get someone else to play me, that would've been stupid.

I start a lot more songs than I finish, because I realize when I get into them, they're no good. I don't throw them away, I just put them away, store them, get them out of sight.

When you are making the one you are doing, you think it is the greatest film going. And then you do another one and it is a great film.

You're watching the movie for the first time when you're working with the actors in front of the camera. You don't think about how the audience will react. You discover the film.

Watching films I'm in is always a bit odd, especially when I'm watching them for the first time with other people. It's hard not to see my faults.

I'm a nervous sharer. I'm nervous to share things in their unfinished state just because, I mean, it's kind of embarrassing. You know what it could be, but you can't explain what it's going to be.

To expose a first draft to anyone's ears other than your own is indecent.

It's very rare I'll watch anything I'm a part of and think, 'I wouldn't change a thing.'

So you know, as a filmmaker you have to get it all right in the writing stage. After that, one has to leave it on the judgement of your trusted ones and the audiences.

I honestly have never really even watched some other things I've done. I don't like doing that to be honest.

In the first season (of 'Californication'), when we had the threesome with the nipple clamps, I was, like, 'I don't get this, I don't know how you're gonna do it.' And then, all of a sudden, there's a crane with a camera hanging over our heads, and you're, like, 'Okayyyyyyy. But how are you gonna sell this? How are you gonna make it work?' And they ended up shooting it brilliantly, cutting it together, and it just all ended up working without me having to compromise my own personal morals.

I get very, very anxious on the set. I have a thousand ideas and I don't censor myself. I wind up cutting some of them out in the editing room... I shoot [needless footage] and then don't use later on in the process.

I may film scenes I had no intention of filming; things suggest themselves on location, and we improvise. I try not to think about it too much. Then, in the cutting room, I take the film and start to put it together, and only then do I begin to get an idea of what it is about.

I can never watch anything I've been involved in, because I know it, and I know what the making of it was like, and I know what's been cut out and changed. I just know it.

One begins to mistrust very clever people when they become embarrassed.

I was probably 16.I played - I tried to play these songs that I had written. And, this was a common theme when I was younger: I would write a song about somebody, and they would come to my show. I wouldn't be able to play the whole thing, because, there would be some giant, loaded secret coming up in like, the third verse, or something.

I hate going back over what I've written. It makes me feel physically sick.