Debra Granik Quotes

You should bear in mind that almost all my documentaries are feature films in disguise.

I don't normally make documentaries. I'm a drama director. I've made a few short docs, but I don't like talking heads or 'voice of God' narrators.

Well, I want to do everything in sort of a documentary style, ever since I started in the '80s.

I've obviously always been aware of actor-oriented films, being an actor. Altman and Cassavetes were really strong. And then I realized their structures were quite fascinating, too.

In film, I believe things should either be documentary or drama.

Raman Raghav' was shot on location, but there are many stylistic things in it. I like this mixture of documentary and extreme stylization.

Documentaries have always inspired me in narrative filmmaking.

I've been making films since the '70s and trying to develop that best possible fiction-film style that I feel is the most expressive. At a certain point, I felt I was winding up making the same film stylistically and I found that boring.

'Apocalypse Now' does not alienate us or deconstruct itself. In fact, it welcomes us in.

I came from the school of cinema verite documentaries, which was: Do not manipulate reality as it was happening but create a narrative in the editing room.

Hitchcock makes it very clear to us. There's an objective and a subjective camera, like there's a third- and a first-person narrator in literature.

Critics can say what they like about the films, but very often, there's a certain expectation of documentaries that they're supposed to be like PowerPoint presentations. I see documentaries as movies. So when I see some critics writing that we could have done without the recreations altogether - well, perhaps.

I think Kurosawa was one of the first storytelling geniuses who began to change the narrative structure of films.

The big influence on me was Robert Altman, who, especially in 'Nashville,' transformed my sense of dramatic structure and showed how you could handle overlapping stories.

When I'm making documentaries, I think a lot about how fiction films play. I want them to have the pacing, the twists and the character development of fiction films.

The Hollywood movies are more like novels, and the kinds of films I make are more like poems.

To make a documentary is one thing, to make a feature film is quite another.

With the dramatic canvas, I found you could still operate with the documentarist's observational eye.

I always thought of documentaries as films through which you find your voice as a narrator.

Look at the opening sequence of 'The Blues Brothers,' which starts at the prison. The way it was filmed, it does not look like a comedy. I thought that was great.

I think Direct Cinema's trying to be insightful by looking at reality in a very close way while, in fact, much more is staged than we like to think. In cinema verite, it's about trying to make something invisible visible - the role of fantasy and imagination in everyday life.

I've never seen myself as a documentary filmmaker. I see myself as a filmmaker, period, and I am interested in drama as well as in documentary.

I think of myself as a cultural filmmaker.

Personally, as a filmmaker, I think you should prepare your audience as to what they can expect.

Cinema is a director's medium; it's his story and his vision. If it's a good story, people will connect to it.