If you're writing a screenplay for a feature, you don't have any involvement with the casting process, the editing process, the set design, the costume design, or any of that stuff.
I always believed in if you give your best, people will see it, and it moves to the next level. I got my first movie, and I gave it my best. Before I was done with that movie, I was offered my first feature film.
The first time I went behind the camera was in 1993. I felt, 'This is my thing,' and I knew that someday I'd make a feature.
There's always a concern over budget with film too but people are more extravagant when they're making a feature. In television everything's tight, everything's paired down and it's just a question of making it look expensive.
It was interesting to write ad films and scripts for TV shows before I moved on to writing a feature film. That helped me grow as a writer, and I also found out how long I could sit in front of a computer and see something through.
I have a company where I'm trying to get projects off the ground. Me and my partner Madeleine Sackler, we just shot our first feature in a maximum security prison where about 95% of the cast were incarcerated men. We're editing that and there's a doc going with it.
My first movie role was a supporting performance in a Canadian film called 'Final Lady.' It was a great opportunity for me at the time.
Everything we do on 'Luck' is absolutely no different than if we'd had been doing it in a feature film. There's no short cuts. The specificity of what every single line might mean. Everything Dustin Hoffman does. Kevin Dunn is as authentic in the last scene of the last episode as he is in the first scene of the first episode.
I did a good bit of episodic television directing, but directing a movie is so much more complicated.
I made my film debut in 1973.
It's all movies for me. And besides, when you say documentaries, in my case, in most of these cases, means "feature film" in disguise.
I want to direct a feature film. Horror is my main genre.
I think feature film can be quite conservative, because you have to now get audiences to come out, and it's quite a hard thing to do. Of course, television can be conservative too.
TV is designed a certain way where you have three, four days on stage and three or four days out. You're basically making a feature every seven days. You have to shoot an hour's worth.
Terry Malick offered me three parts in 'The Thin Red Line.' I was busy shooting other movies while he asked me the first two.
Feature film can have a major role in explaining ideas and describing peoples' lives and their struggles.
Do I enjoy features? Yeah, I really do. Would I like to do some more features before I head to the barn? Yeah, probably. But I also love television. I love doing television because it's fast, and that I like a lot.
I was in a very lucky position to be able to consider studio films and had decided to not go that route for a very long time until I read a script that I loved called 'Aeon Flux.'
After I made my first short film that wasn't terrible, people were interested in potentially developing a feature with me. Every time I read a script, it was a bizarre, too-dark, genre-less thing that no one wanted to make.
When we moved to L.A., I started going out for more commercials, and then one day they emailed me a movie script. The first thing I said was, 'No way. I love commercials.'
The first feature film I did, when I did 'Night Shift,' I improvised quite a bit because I would improvise at the audition, so sometimes I would return to the original lines, and then when I was on set, I would improvise even more.
Lord of the Rings was something I always wanted to do. I read the book when I was about 25, and I was always hoping if it was ever made into a feature film that I would be involved in some way. And then I finally got it, and I was over the moon. It was fantastic news.
In terms of directing a feature, I'd want the story to be right - you know, it's a year of your life, and you have to be focused on one thing, so I want it to be a story that I really, really care about and will enjoy making.
In feature film world I'm very much...a hired hand. It's a world of Tom Cruise, Julia Roberts, Mel Gibson - they're able to produce and to star and it's, that's not my world.
With a feature film you're dealing with so much more money and you've got to be very aware of the fact that you're really working with an audience. You've got to have a relationship with the audience. Play with them and show them things you want them to see.
