Noah Hawley Quotes

There's no one out there like Quentin Tarantino. His films have a signature look, and they never just stick to the same kind of story.

I like to play with transgression and upending conventions, and I like the idea of rooting genre films in character.

If we're talking about the science fiction or action genres, I've always tried when I could to do them in a way that's not just cookie-cutter - that they bring something fresh or original to it, have some kind of ideas to it. I've been fortunate, in some sense, to do those kinds of movies that are unique.

As a screenwriter I'm often writing in genres where there have been thousands of movies; whereas when I direct movies they tend to be in between genres. They tend to have a little bit of a genre to them, but they're really about the people, and they're people we haven't met before.

Also, as an author, character has always been what I'm most interested in - much more so than plot or setting, although those are good things too.

. . . what humanity most desperately needs is not the creation of new worlds but the recreation in terms of human comprehension of the world we have -- and it is for this reason that arts go on for generation to generation in spite of the fact that Phidias has already carved and Homer has already sung. The creation, we are informed, was accomplished in seven days with Sunday off, but the recreation will never be accomplished because it is always accomplished anew for each generation of living men.

If you can take it to the next level and really tell an interesting story in a unique and fresh way, then I feel like that's a great song.

The problem with the Jude Law "Hamlet" was simply that it wasn't unpredictable, that it was a very down-the-center modern production. You wouldn't go to the theater expecting to see an old-fashioned "Hamlet" where everybody wears an old fashioned costume. You don't get points for putting on a "Hamlet" where everybody dresses in black. I've seen that one several times. But again, it's not that it has to be new, it simply that it has to be different, fresh, that it doesn't bore, that it doesn't make me - I don't feel as I'm watching it that I know where it's going to go.

I don't think I make genre movies. There is a certain type of violence in my films but I think I have my own genre because I made it happen like that.

I'm always trying to pop up in different genres, what interests me. Sometimes I just like to throw myself into new situations to see what it feel like.

If you're gonna let the character be the story, you better set a tone that allows the actors to do the best work they can do.

I do experiment with lots of different genres. In making music, I don't think of genre like, "I want to do this, because I'm going use that country music sound; I'm going use that hip-hop sound; I'm going use that acoustic [sound]." It's just making music. So now that I've traveled a lot more since I did Acoustic Soul, I'm sure that different sounds will come into place, because I have been exposed to it and I like it. But it's not so much of a conscience effort. It's mind and spirited. You know, we're humans.

No one says a novel has to be one thing. It can be anything it wants to be, a vaudeville show, the six o’clock news, the mumblings of wild men saddled by demons.

Dialogue is character and character is plot.

The purpose of this is not show that I can do it better, because I think Superman is perfect. The original creation of Superman nobody could have done that better and I think Batman is pretty much a perfect character... The same with all of them. I'm just going to try to find a way to say, "If that wasn't the original idea, what would be another way to do it that would be more in my style?".

Mary had a little lamb, its fleece electrostatic / And everywhere Mary went, the lights became erratic.

One of the reasons I love making movies is because it's an opportunity to share with the world a different way of being or a different way of living or seeing the world. If it's something you've already seen before, if I have too many reference points for it, then it's not exciting for me to make.

In most good stories, it is the character's personality that creates the action of the story. If you start with real personality, a real character, then something is bound to happen.

I try to take B genre movies and treat them as if they're A dramas. Get the cinematographers, get the actors to do an A drama, but it just happens to be about aliens or ghosts or crazy people, or killers, or whatever it is.

I do love genres, but I love finding new ways into the genre, or making that world fresh again.

In college I studied essays with a poet, and so I think my interpretation of the genre was always going to be a little off-kilter.

I love playing with the conventions of fantasy, and breaking rules, and crossing lines.

I think it actually makes more sense for a new audience than the old show did because we're focusing on one character at a time. It's all conjecture why somebody didn't watch, but one of the theories was that there was just so much information, even in the trailers and promos, of all these different people.

I am attracted to the diversity of different characters. I like doing things that test the boundaries of character and genres, outside the comfort zone.

It was always hard to find stories that I felt were, in and of themselves, fresh enough and intriguing enough .