Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu Quotes

If you think about it, episodic filmmaking has not been something that people have really done.

When you look at a movie, you look at a director's thought process.

When I was around 12 or so, I saw 'The Shining.' I just remember that being a turning point for me, where I started to think about the fact that there was a hand behind the film. That it wasn't just this magical story being told - there were actual people crafting these films, and they were works of art.

There's something about film that offers this opportunity to stick to a very, very clear single protagonist's point of view, and I like that.

Some films are aspirational. But there is room for stories which don't have a beginning or end.

Americans don't understand what metaphor in cinema is about. They're extremely good at making straightforward, linear narrative movies, which entertain superbly. But they very rarely do anything else.

The ultimate for me would be to do a feature that didn't require any narrative structure.

It's amazing how everyone has their different ways of working. I like hearing about that process, reading about it. I have so much appreciation for movies because I understand how hard it is to make one. There is always something I gain from watching a movie, whether it's a silly romantic comedy or an art film.

It is very linear storytelling, and I think that's not so much the fashion. I was watching a new drama the other night which was extremely non-linear, where you flash back and flash forward in ways that certainly keeps you on your toes as the audience. There's not much of that courage with the storytelling in our Maigret film.

I love the finality of film. When you make a movie, you know the beginning, middle, and end.

The structural notions to me always have to be worked out very carefully in the script stage. Whatever a particular structure is. Whether it's chronological or non-chronological. To me that's always about what point of view are we trying to address in the film?

Sirkian films really aren't - at least the way I see them, they're not about identification. They don't have voiceover. A lot of the love stories that are rooted, classic love stories rooted in point of view, use voiceover as a mechanism for locating you there.

Most of my books have always worked through juxtaposition, jumping through different point of views and time.

A great director is someone who makes you feel like you're moving forward.

It's hard not to want to become Ken Burns at times. I'm interested in being a Ken Burns who reaches that 17-year-old who goes to the multiplex just to see a good story well-told. And if there's history in it, all the better.

I'm not a big fan of there being voiceovers in movies. I really prefer it when the film tells it story.

I don't want to do a history lesson. I don't think cinema should be about that. Cinema should be about emotions.

It could be sci-fi, love story, historical drama what counts for me is the fact that they're made by great directors with a great point of view who bring the audience to be elevated and at the same time entertained. That's what cinema is.

It's much better to write a book and stick to the research - that's history. In cinema, emotional truth and psychological truth is much more important.

When I first did 'Empire,' it was a severe break from everything I'd written up to that point, which is all very continuity-driven, super-heroic, and ethics and morals-infused. 'Empire' was a chance to break away from that.

I love the novel as a form, as an adventure of mind and soul. Really, I absolutely love writing them; they consume my days and nights - what can I say? But I am an avid film student, too: I watch a movie every night.

I don't know what that line is between fiction and non-fiction that other people have in their minds, but to me, when I'm writing, it's just like whatever the next sentence should be is the next sentence. It's not this artificial division.

In my films, a lot of the situations come from real life.

I love writing two narratives! I think concurrent storylines are my favorite way to write a book.

Films have to find a way to compress many anecdotes into one, or many events into one. Otherwise there is no way to tell it in two and a half hours.