Gus Van Sant Quotes

I'm trying to do different music, and I'm trying to be out of the box.

I'm a sworn enemy of convention. I despite the conventional in anything, even the arts. I paint canvasses on the floor and drove one art teacher out of his mind. But that's just the way I paint best.

I think I'm always conscious of not letting things fit into a specific box. Being a filmmaker and trying to chart a career, you never want anyone to be able to pigeonhole you into one specific thing.

What's lucky about my career in general is that I stumbled into what every writer most wants. Not repeating myself and doing strange things has become my trademark.

I'm at the point now where I know I'm doing something right when a movie gets mixed reviews, because then I'm not in the box. I don't want to make it too easy for people and I don't want to make it too easy for myself. I want to try something unusual.

I like surprising myself. I don't want to do the norm, do what I'm always known to do, write how I like to write.

I think anytime you can do something you haven't seen or done in a film before, it's always a great day as an actor.

I could never be like Hitchcock and do only one kind of movie. Anything that's good is worthwhile.

I guess I much prefer the path of the contrarian: the guy who goes against the grain a bit. The careers of the people who I admire deeply - like the Coen brothers and Soderbergh - don't repeat themselves, and they make radically different films at times, and I think that's wonderful.

There are no rules. That is how art is born, how breakthroughs happen. Go against the rules or ignore the rules. That is what invention is about.

There's not a formula that I'm following; it's just how I feel at the time. For instance, I did a very experimental film called 'Hardcore Henry,' and that was simply because I thought the filmmaker was very interesting and a risk taker. A film like that had never been made before, so I chose to do that at the time.

What people don't realize is that when you start making things outside of the convention of what is normal or good or 'best practices,' you're also shedding some of the baggage that comes with the concept of what a game 'should' be.

When you think 'Peaky Blinders,' when it first began it got mixed reviews and people didn't know what to do with it, and it was like: 'Why is there modern music on this?' So I think whenever you do something different you're going to get that response.

I wanna make weird stuff.

Way back in the beginning, I would say in the 20s, when titles were first being treated for films, there was a lot of crazy stuff going on. Everybody was inventing. There were no conventions. Everything was up for grabs.

We do things differently. You don't have to worry about being part of a particular genre. You just go for it.

I would like to continue being radical. As you get older, some of the world catches up and it's passed you. In the '60s you were on the crest of a wave because you were part of the wave. I don't want be a stick in the mud and do the same thing as I did last year, I want to do something different and see what happens.

When I made my first film, I think the thing was probably helped me the most was that it was such an unusual thing to do in the early 50s for someone who actually go and make a film. People thought it was impossible. It really is terribly easy. All anybody needs is a camera, a tape recorder, and some imagination.

The secret is to follow the advice the masters give you in their works while doing something different from them.

We're in a very competitive industry, and sometimes the bigger Hollywood things are not so risk takey. I find myself mostly existing in this weirdo indie world, which I feel really comfortable being in. The thing that motivates me the most is to try to do something way different than the last thing that I did.

I don't have the same restrictions that other people do because I never painted myself into a corner. I've always done things that didn't necessarily fit the form. I've never felt limited in that respect in terms of songwriting.

I try to please people, to give them a good time, but I refuse to make my act conform to traditional show-biz standards of entertainment. There's a little voice that says, 'Oh, no, you can't do that, that's breaking all the rules.' That's the voice of show business. Then this other little voice says, 'Try it.' And most of the time, when the voice comes on and says, 'No,' that's the time it works.

I've made movies that cost less than one car chase. But that's part of the pleasure of doing it, pushing yourself in new directions.

When subject matter is forced to fit into preconceived patterns, there can be no freshness of vision. Following rules of composition can only lead to a tedious repetition of pictorial cliches.

I feel like so much of what I'm doing is making a road where there is no road and inviting people on that road with me. It's scary. It's scary, but I can't listen to the voices that are saying form is the only way, or that there is only this kind of form or that kind of form.