Without a Prospero-Caliban relationship to balance the Prospero-Ariel one, 'The Tempest' loses much of its resonance.
'Hellraiser' was what 'Hellraiser' was. It was a $900k movie, and there wasn't anything I would have done differently. But 'Nightbreed' was taken away from me. It was thought that its meaning wasn't... Its meaning didn't chime with the producers.
Arithmetic is the death of story.
Film is built for kinetic movement and crash and burn. It's a great tool for spectacles. But if it's not rooted to something a little higher, you're just kicking your butt around the corner. You can only take so much of that. You have to have some sort of foundation to explode from.
I hate even the idea of a synopsis. When stories are really working, when you're providing subtextual exploration and things that are deeply layered, you're obligated to not say things out loud.
I don't believe films should have a message, but 'Saleem' does.
The songs that work best are broad lyrically and have one strong concept in the metaphor.
I'm not very particular about the commercial angle in my films, but entertainment is very important.
...the characters in my books all resemble each other. They live, with minor variations, the same moments, the same perils, and when I speak of them, my language, which is inspired by them, repeats the same poems in the same tone.
When you're editing, you're putting it together in a way that makes sense metaphysically. You're not inventing it, but you're finding the story that's there. You're making a play that's eventually going to go on stage and present itself to an audience. You want to show what happened, not exactly what you have evidence of happening.
With a novel, you have to have a story. It's much more important to have it matter to the reader what happens to people, and it has to make sense and end in a way that is satisfying. So I spend a lot more time thinking about that. Then the writing itself usually is easier for me, because I know where it's going.
And if Hollywood has taught us anything, it's that cool props and special effects are not enough. Story comes first. Everything depends on story.
'The Driver' kind of set the tone for what I wanted to say, and lyrically, it especially did.
I like movies where you feel like it was actually thought through.
I love the grandiosity, how sweepingly entertaining films can be. And I think there's a place for films that pry more into the human condition.
Many critics, when trying to praise a short-story collection, will say that it has the heft and scope of a good novel. But for me, one of the highest compliments you can pay a novel is to say that it has the rich texture and eloquent detail of a good story collection.
But novels are never about what they are about; that is, there is always deeper, or more general, significance. The author may not be aware of this till she is pretty far along with it.
A literary creation can appeal to us in all sorts of ways-by its theme, subject, situations, characters. But above all it appeals to us by the presence in it of art. It is the presence of art in Crime and Punishment that moves us deeply rather than the story of Raskolnikov's crime.
A good writer cannot avoid having social consciousness. I don't mean this about small pieces of writing, but about a big book. If it's a big book, there has to be more than one undertow.
Content-driven films can make money - something that is gripping, is a journey of revelation and is relevant is cinema.
What I've realized is that a film operates both on the intellectual and emotional levels, and if you can find a way to tell a riveting story and draw ideas out of that, it's very powerful.
When I go for a project, I wonder what underpinning a project will have that's going to give the audience some emotional access to it.
I think '300 Arguments' is a real tiny wallop of a book. It looks very slim, and at first, each little two-sentence or one-sentence thing kind of stands on its own, but again, as you read it, you get sucked into the momentum of it, and the whole of it is much larger than the sum of its parts in a really beautiful way.
Most successful musicals need to attach themselves to something bigger than themselves, a concept that will make people feel immediately connected to it.
I can watch films and say how technically beautiful they are, but I'm not impressed by any technicality.
