Steve Erickson Quotes

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

There's the movie you write, there's the movie you shoot and the movie you edit, and often, you find that you're getting the same information out of a scene that you already have and a scene that's actually more powerful, so you have to make the tough decision to take it out.

Movies are an editor's medium.

TV and film taught me to think cinematically. Teaching others to edit, for example, provides a great deal of insight into the millions of ways in which given elements can be put together to tell a story.

We talked a lot about The Best Intentions and how we could shoot certain scenes in different ways with slightly different bits of dialogue and information, so that later on, we could cut the piece more easily and it would still feel complete, even though it was shorter.

The craft of putting together a performance on film or television is incredibly intricate; you're putting together a story that is completely out of order, that you have to make some sense of, that you have to keep some coherence to the story, to the character.

When we were shooting the movie, and of course in the editing room we had to make choices, but the shots fall almost exactly where we thought they would. They're not about content; they're never meant to be about what just happened. There's that weird phenomenon where the more you like a movie the more your mind wanders and goes all over the place.

There are many ingredients that go into making a film. It baffles me, what works and what doesn't.

Hollywood has its own way of telling stories. I was just telling stories that I was familiar with. And it's what I want to do in the future: I want to take my audio cinema and put it on the screen.

I do think the challenge, in a way for me, is to write a narrative film and when you finish watching it you feel like it's a collage. You tell the narrative, you tell the story, but you feel like you've created this tapestry. But it also has a shape, a story.

There are very few films that work like a novel.

I've always been really attracted to playing with structure. To take the story of 'Fargo' and break it up in such a way that's it's not linear, per se.

Film is just a great medium to express yourself and a great environment to work around.

Movies become art after editing. Instead of just reproducing reality, they juxtapose images of it. That implies expression; that's art.

I want to make movies that I want to see, and what I miss and I'm not seeing.

When you make a movie, you do it so piecemeal. You're doing it, not only scene by scene, out of order, but shot by shot, line by line. And there's this idea that the director has the whole thing in his or her head and they're going to somehow weave it all together in the end.

I think from an early age I was aware of how a camera can tell a story, how a movie camera can affect how the narrative is told.

When you're making a film, you become incredibly close. It's not like you're filing away papers all day. You're creating with human emotions, so you do become very connected, so it is familial and romantic.

A feature film is twenty-four lies per second.

I think you should make movies as long as the story dictates.

In film, you have to let go sometimes.

But I suppose film is distinctive because of its nature, of its being able to cut through time with editing.

Same thing with film, by the time you've finished shooting and you've really been into everything, you've touched up everything in the editing room. You've gone in there and taken little bits from everything.

I'm in awe of directors like the Coen brothers who can shoot their script and edit it, and that's the movie. They're not discovering the movie in postproduction. They're editing the script they shot.

I'm not a purist - I like films that are narrated and films that aren't, films that are beautiful and films that are clumsy but heartfelt. Mostly, I just like a good story and good characters.