Sebastian Lelio Quotes

The idea of us telling a story where a character doesn't get everything he wants at the end is one of the relatable things - dealing with failures and missteps in life - and it's something that's so rarely dealt with in movies, especially kids' movies.

'Rocky' is a movie that just happens to be about boxing. It's really about characters and story lines and relationships and all those things, and the backdrop is boxing. You can go back and watch the final fight in 'Rocky' a thousand times. If you dig that movie, if you like the characters, you'll watch the whole movie over and over.

When my main character in 'Heat' climbs the tower, the highest diving platform, hoping to resume competitive diving after an injury, I am there with her, sensing the cold grit under her instep. The details are what matter - they are the experience.

I think we do have our true, original stories that work. I can tell you that 'The King's Speech,' which we did, became a worldwide smash because people loved the personal story.

The idea behind 'Gloria' was to take a secondary character - the aunt, the mother - and stay with her as she becomes our protagonist.

How many times do you read about 'the Cinderella story,' the story of the underdog, the story of the ordinary human being, often subjected to cruelty and ignorance and neglect, who somehow triumphs?

If a movie has more characters than an audience can keep track of, the audience will get confused and lose interest in the story.

It is very grand and sumptuous and awesome to look at but it was really about the characters for me.

Coming from TV and film, rule number one is that you always service the main character first and foremost. If that's not working, you've got nothing.

Sometimes female characters start out as the wife or girlfriend, but then I realize, 'No, she's the book,' and she becomes a main character. I surrender the book to her.

I think all good sports movies aren't really about sports.

And for better or worse, a story like 'Pieces of April' is the kind of story I'm supposed to tell. The kind of story that makes you laugh as much as possible but also breaks your heart.

Writing about conflict has provided these dramatic opportunities to talk about really substantial moments in a person's life. I'm not writing about superheroes; I'm writing about ordinary people.

The story of Bennet Omalu is a riveting story; it's just a riveting tale. I knew from the beginning if I stayed close to that kind of storytelling and focussed on the character, then the other stuff comes along with it, and the message becomes baked into the journey.

My father's failures inspired me the most and still drive me. He worked for 10 years, but wasn't invited to award functions, forget being nominated. So winning even one trophy is a high for our family.

I'm a character-driven director, and I tend to fall in love with the characters in my movies and TV shows.

I always think once you have the lead protagonist, you cast around that character.

Everyone is interesting except the narrator in a first-person story.

One of the great things about TV is the story to tell can be very internal and really character-based.

A good novel begins with a small question and ends with a bigger one.

On a superhero show, you have to have people who are really human and who have the experience the audience is having.

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.

It depends on the story and the filmmaker. And it depends on the character, and the heart and soul of the person that I see on the page, and if it resonates with something that I think I can summon in myself.

I had a plot connection that nobody understood for this fourth character, and decided, Oh, nobody gets it, that's all. I'll write another draft to make her make sense. It took me awhile to learn that these three people were the core of this play, which seems so obvious now.

A good movie humanizes people.