The thing I've come to learn is that what's great about small independent films is the intimacy and the communication that occurs when you're making them.
If you depict one home and the drama moving around one family, people love it because the characters become identifiable.
I wrote The Same Sea not as a political allegory about Israelis and Palestinians. I wrote it about something much more gutsy and immediate. I wrote it as a piece of chamber music.
The radio is good for taking somebody else's experience and making you understand what it would be like. Because when you don't see someone, but you hear them talking - and, uh, that is what radio is all about - it's like when someone is talking from the heart. Everything about it conspires to take you into somebody else's world.
Many writers do write about their families and their immediate loved ones and love experiences, either as children or as adults. And very often people get offended by it.
My lyrics are my diary - you're hearing every detail of my life.
I really appreciate Frank Ocean's lyrical style, I appreciate the way that he can kind of draw you into this personal space, but it's still lyrical. It's almost poetic, in a way, but it's very personal at the same time.
Smaller movies are great because you don't have to argue with so many people all the time. But really I like arguing so there's a balance either way.
'The Missing Picture' is about my story and my parents. Before this film, I never said 'I' in a film, so it is very personal.
The movies I make - the goal isn't a mass audience. They're not expensive films. So the attempt is to reach a much more limited audience - one would say an audience that enjoys films that challenge them emotionally and intellectually.
On 'Master of None,' the majority of the episodes were just one story, and that was by design because we really wanted to focus in on the character of Dev and get the audience in his head.
I really care more about the human drama than I do the thriller stuff.
'Santa Sangre' is the picture I love the best, myself, because 'El Topo' and 'The Holy Mountain' I made with my head, and 'Santa Sangre' I made with my feelings, with my heart. It's an emotional picture. And it's more real for me, that picture.
I have an affinity for writing in the first person. I love the intimacy of being dropped inside the character.
A simple story filmed with limited sets can often be more effective than a costly extravaganza. provided it had depth and allows the audience to identify with the character.
My movies are painfully personal, but I'm never trying to let you know how personal they are. It's my job to make it be personal, and also to disguise that so only I or the people who know me know how personal it is. 'Kill Bill' is a very personal movie.
Writers have problems writing sex scenes, because writing one really well is pornography.
The things I want to make into a film, they're personal, esoteric things, and I don't expect anyone else to like them as much as I do. I generally like my films more than anybody else will.
I'm disappointed by well-written novels that only deal with two or three people.
I would say that 'After the Storm' is much more informed by my personal life than my other movies.
When I first read Helen Weinzweig's 'Basic Black with Pearls' several years ago, I emerged in the sort of daze that happens when a book seems to ferret out your most secret thoughts and hopes. Since then, I've described the book to others as an 'interior feminist espionage novel.'
The film of tomorrow appears to me as even more personal than an individual and autobiographical novel, like a confession, or a diary.
I tend to prefer the smaller movies because they shoot more efficiently and so you're are able to maintain that momentum of the character a little more easily.
Those are my favorite kinds of movies, where the plots are quite small and character-driven.
You can have an interesting story about a person living an interesting life. And if it's done well, that is just as engaging as the end of the world. A million people dying - we can't process. One person, we can process.
