Margo Jefferson Quotes

We're used to a story in modern terms as an information delivery device. Certainly on television and even with the studio films, there's really only one note that you get, and that's clarity. And people will sacrifice everything for clarity. They'll sacrifice the joke. They'll sacrifice the moment, or the romance.

Film is such a very good tool for communicating emotions, and all designers and creative people look to inspire an emotional response.

My interpretation of a strong director is someone who knows their story. That's what directors are, they're storytellers because they're directing where your focus is going to be as an audience.

I don't purposely push the boundaries... I think if you pay attention to a story, it will have exactly as much 'difficult material' as it needs, and nobody will complain about it because you've earnt it.

I'll say, what makes me happy about making movies is, every once in a while through movies we find a kind of honesty. There's an honesty in fiction that's as effective or even more powerful than the honesty of our lives. We can find something that's genuinely true, like a chemistry between people or a statement that speaks to an audience.

In film, you can't go into analytical explorations because the audience will reject that.

You can be a smarty-pants director, but that won't matter if the movie doesn't work emotionally as well as intellectually.

Many of my favorite films, if someone were to tell me simply what they're about, I probably wouldn't be that interested. Plot often has so little to do with what's at the heart of a film.

I feel like the great filmmakers who have a true voice, yeah they take the notes, they understand the notes, but it's really about the notes underneath the notes. When you do a test screening and somebody says, 'Well, I didn't like the love story,' but it was probably just too long.

You can have ambiguity in television that you are not allowed in film... at least in Hollywood studio films.

The interesting thing about movies, it's not always - y'know, you have to have structure etc and all those things, but an audience responds, in many ways, we walk away and certain things stay in our heads that are memorable.

I always felt there was a kind of humanistic impulse in my thinking about film as well as a real interest in its formal and aesthetic properties - just this idea that it can bring you into a very intimate encounter with people.

'Piku' was driven by subtleties. Most films come with the padding of the sound, the visual, the drama.

I get people saying, 'Opera is too large a canvas for me. I don't love it. I love movies that feel almost like documentaries,' in terms of artistic vocabularies of storytelling. I totally get that discussion; that makes sense to me.

A film should always at least be about something.

When I make a film, the yardstick is my mind. If I laugh at the jokes and feel sad at the serious undersides, then the subject works.

A movie like 'The Apartment' is beautifully directed, but you can't put your finger on why it's such a good movie. It just is, because of all these things that Billy Wilder is subtly doing. That level of filmmaking is something I aspire to.

A lot of TV and film commits to one tone.

As a filmmaker, I really want to utilize the tools to carry the voice - my voice, and the voice of the characters.

For me, there's something about a certain kind of genre film that has real potency in its emotional landscape.

Within the mainstream cinema, I feel you can experiment and make sensible films. It's possible to tell a story with characters and emotions which are real, genuine, and which need not be over the top.

As a filmmaker I have changed, yes. I seem to have crossed a line and that journey, trajectory change is more apparent. I'd say, what changed dramatically in me as a filmmaker is the fact that now, it is about why am I making the film, what is this supposed to mean to people. Earlier, it was more about entertaining or engaging them.

I mean, we should only be talking about the merits of film ["Moonlight"] because one of the great things about the visual language is that it is the great equalizer.

When I go for a project, I wonder what underpinning a project will have that's going to give the audience some emotional access to it.

A lot of the struggle I had with movies is I really loved moments and tones and feelings in a scene, and I loved creating those, but I never really had great stories to string them together.