Gus Van Sant Quotes

I like doing a lot of research, and then you get there, you're in wardrobe, and then you're just reacting to what the other person is doing. The other actor is reacting to what you're doing, and it's this great back and forth. Because you've done all this research, you can use some of it or throw a lot of it out. You can get lost in it.

What's fascinating is that when you write a script, it's almost a stream of consciousness. You have an idea that it means something, but you're not always sure what. Then when you get on the set, the actors teach you.

Know your lines; otherwise, have an open mind because you want to get lost in the moment. When you have talented actors and directors to work with, then it's pretty easy to do.

On 'Silver Linings Playbook,' David O. Russell is the master at getting his actors to give him something that he doesn't expect. He loves to keep things spontaneous. He talks to the actors throughout a take because, in real life, you don't know what the next person is going to say; you don't know when you're going to get interrupted.

With any of the movies I've had a chance to do, or any of the TV shows I've had a chance to contribute to, people approach me and say, 'Hey, would you like to do this?' I laugh out loud and say, 'Yes, that'd be funny.' Or, I'm very moved by what I read and say, 'Yes. How can I help you?'

I like collaborating with actors. I love finding that moment where it all comes together.

Directing is a reactionary job more than a creation job. The job is to react whether it's moment one, the first time you read the script or see an article or read a book or notice something happen on the street and have an idea for a movie, and it just continues from there on in. You're just reacting to dialogue, a performance, an audition, a headache, a piece of furniture, a piece of clothing.

There are a lot of things I love about acting and one of the things I love the most is, here you are taking words off a page, working with someone you might have met just a week before, and somehow you're creating a moment that separates itself from space and time. You feel an incredible rush when you have that moment with another actor. You can feel it bounce off one another. Every take you do can reveal different things that were hiding. And things outside the story get revealed to you, too. It's an incredible way to work and to experience a story.

You get the information, and it's not your job to judge it or not judge it. You adapt, and you do it. That's what we do as actors. We're just as surprised as the viewers, sometimes.

I don't like improvising on camera, particularly, but very often, a scene will not be working, and you rehearse it once or twice, and you realize something's missing. So I'll play with it until it makes sense.

The way I write is very much without kind of a goal. I have something I'm interested in and then I decide I'm going to explore it. I don't know where the characters are going to go, I don't know what the movie is going to do or what the screenplay is going to do. For me, that's the way to keep it alive.

As an actor, our very palette is one of imagination. So it is a walk onto an empty space and then imagine the world beyond it is what we do.

I like to sit down every day and not know where the book is going. I have no idea where the book is going to go or how it's going to end as I'm writing it.

I started improvising the Cliff character, based on someone I grew up with.

I prefer to surprise myself as I'm writing. I'm not interested in it if I already know where it's going. So I have only the most general sense of what I'm doing when I start a story. I sometimes have a destination in mind, but how the story is going to go from Point A to Point Z is something I make up as I go along.

The minute I ever start thinking about what a character would do is the minute I bring my ego into play. It's the minute I'm putting a judgment on something.

As for doing more dramatic work over comedy, I do whatever turns me on at the moment.

The good thing about having chemistry is, when you get to the improv section of a scene, you've got somebody to feed off. It can go on and on and on, and the sky's the limit.

Acting is an imaginative leap, really, isn't it? And imaginations prosper in different circumstances.

I hardly ever go into the studio with a work complete in my head. It emerges from communal activity.

As a director, it is important to understand the actor's process.

One of the things I really love about TV is this symbiotic relationship you can get between the writers and the actors, and the characters start to come to life because you start to collaborate.

Anyone who has been given the gift of being opposite an actor who gives and gives, it just makes you better.

No matter how much I plan the overall arc of the character, you get there day one on the film and you shooting certain scenes first, and it goes completely different to anything you ever thought of, and then it's done.

An actor finds things in the moment with a director and other actors that you don't have time to hand-draw or animate with a computer.