Lisa Hanawalt Quotes

It's really easy to make a movie that five people understand. It's really hard to make something that a lot of people understand and yet is not obvious, still has subtlety and ambiguity, and leaves you with something to do as a viewer.

The mixture of weird textures and organic surfaces creates an interesting dialogue.

'The State Within' demands a certain intelligence from its audience. It doesn't just wash over you - it asks for commitment. And that's a really good thing.

Representation means having characters with layers, showing them as human beings, so we can relate or have mixed emotions for that character.

I often use the same harmonies as pop music because the complexity of what I do is elsewhere.

I like to be able to feel as many parts of myself while watching a movie at one time. I think that's what 'Super' is - it's funny, but it's also sad. It's very touching in certain ways, and it's also got a very dark sense of humor. So it's allowed to go anywhere.

I think people have a hard time dealing with a bunch of things at once. They can't have something be disturbing and funny at the same time. They can't have that kind of combination. Which is weird to me because I feel complicated about most things.

If it's simple simple, it's boring. We try for the idea that is so simple that it will make you think and rethink.

The music that we listen to these days, everything is right there in your face. There's no real mystery. It's not poetic. I want people to think. I want to make people listen to my lyrics.

I don't like to just be simple. Even though some of my stuff can seem simple at times, I like to write in a way that, when you listen to it over and over again, you hear something new, and it requires you to think.

I personally feel like certain topics and certain issues aren't really being conveyed the right way in music nowadays. It's all very direct and to the point without leaving anything to the imagination.

Some movies are entirely too heavy, and some movies have no meat in them.

I don't want to dumb anything down, and I think people appreciate that. Even if it's not their cup of tea.

If there's anything consistent about my work, it's not flat.

My music has to be funny and sad and happy and loving; it's gotta have it all. When somebody's just too dark all the time, it's just drama. Or if somebody's too funny? Well, I like being too funny sometimes.

Whenever I do anything, even the most simple character, I need to twist it somehow, make it more challenging, in terms of psychology and storytelling. I can't just do it straight.

What I also love about Lorrie Moore stories is they take me a long time to read. They're not easy for me because each sentence, I feel like, is so rich and dense, it just sends me off in a thousand directions.

I may make you angry or make you feel sorry for me, but in the end, you appreciate my show because it's not one-dimensional.

If it's extravagant, colorful and detailed, it catches my eye.

Design is important because chaos is so hard.

Good drama should sandpaper the mind.

Quite often, and in fact more often, I would say, I'm struggling all the way through to think, "What is it I like about this? What is the personality of this thing I'm hearing that I like so much?" And it's nearly always a sort of mixed emotion, which is why I like it. It's something that I have mixed feelings about in the sense that it's both, say, placid and dangerous, or bitter and sweet, or dark and bright.

The sign of a masterpiece: A painting when there's a lack of resolution.

I love being entertained sure, but the movies that I live for, the movies that I buy and think about and stay in my mind are the movies that entertain me but leave me with something a little uncomfortable to grapple with in the lobby.

In my mind it's so much fun to have something that has clues and is mysterious - something that is understood intuitively rather than just being spoon-fed to you. That's the beauty of cinema, and it's hardly ever even tried. These days, most films are pretty easily understood, and so people's minds stop working.