Michel Gondry Quotes

Sometimes you can have a great scene but it just doesn't need to be in the movie. If it's not progressing the plot, not progressing the story, not adding to the momentum, or if it's not purposefully serving a breath - it has got to go.

If a scene is longer than three pages, it better be for a good reason.

Unless the story line carries the scenes, the scenes don't really mean anything.

My conception of it was that in a normal film you have a story with different movements that program, develop, go a little bit off the trunk, come back, and end.

I go to great lengths to make certain situations feel right to the reader.

I like a film that makes the audience feel like they are in the middle of life as it is moving, and in a way, they are catching up. They are thrown into things.

Usually, when I read something, I'm looking for the story first. And then, when I re-read it, I check every part of it to see whether every scene is necessary. You imagine yourself watching the movie, to see whether or not you're losing the through-line of the story.

Filmmaking is a language where you empathise with human situations. Unless you have empathy for characters, you shouldn't be a filmmaker.

But at a certain point you've gotta be ruthless with the movie because you can have these great scenes, but they aren't specifically building the story that needs to be built at that moment.

If a scene doesn't work on three levels - it's not advancing the story, the characters, and telling me something new - then put it in the trash.

Deleted scenes are like in a middle gray zone. It's like, well, they're deleted because they're not good or you lost the battle and you couldn't put them in the movie.

It’s like your batteries get low, and you need to charge them on someone else’s story.

We're all strangers connected by what we reveal, what we share, what we take away--our stories. I guess that's what I love about books--they are thin strands of humanity that tether us to one another for a small bit of time, that make us feel less alone or even more comfortable with our aloneness, if need be.

Movies are like a machine that generates empathy.

I don't want to show deleted scenes. I don't like an audience looking at what the movie might have been - if it's in the movie, it's in the movie.

In a film, if you can capture what's going on underneath, you can begin to make a connection between the character and the people watching it.

Then I tell my own story. The two things that people really need to transform is language to understand their experience and to know they're not alone. It's the combination of the researcher-storyteller part.

To achieve the intimacy between performer and audience in storytelling, I feel like I have to let the audience in on my emotional state, not just, "Here's a story I'm going to tell by rote, and you're just going to listen to it, because I'm such a wonderfully entertaining fellow." It's the idea of sharing enough of myself that it's not just all about, "Look at me, look at me." There's an element to it of, "You understand what I'm talking about, right? You've been in this place that I've been in," which makes it a richer experience.

That's one of the great thing about writing is that you get to be in someone's head.

Powerful is our need to be known, really known by ourselves and others, even if only for a moment.

Don't rush or force the ending. All you have to know is the next scene, or the next few scenes.

I would describe myself as a writer that hopes to take you into my world and help you feel a little safer.

I have the great privilege of being both witness and storyteller. Intimacy, trust and intuition guide my work.

Some of songs are autobiographical and some of it is more telling a story from someone else's perspective. It's healthy for me to do that because, oftentimes, it can become too narcissistic if I'm trying to express myself all of the time. My problems are what I'm going through and sometimes it's nice to take a step back and feel what someone else is going through and that can help.

As the new work fills my notebooks, I've come to realize that the characters in my stories were so real because I really did want to get close to people, I really did want to know them. It was just easier to do it on paper, one step removed.