Every song in 'Groundhog Day' works to forward the story in a chronological, narrative sense, to illuminate the state of mind of the person singing it and comment on the world.
A short story can be packed with meaning and impact, with the concentrated density of a collapsed star, but should preferably also have a kind of elegant simplicity.
On TV, stories and events are finalized in 30 or 60 minutes, or neatly tied up after a season or two. The best stories are the ones that force us to come to our own conclusions and to explain why we believe in our conclusions.
I think that 'Mary Poppins' needs a subtle reader, in many respects, to grasp all its implications, and I understand that these cannot be translated in terms of the film.
Inherit the Wind is a wonderful play, and I was in the original with Paul Muni.
I know that movies are basically meant to be entertainment, but I'm not that interested in entertainment.
When you look at 'Grapes of Wrath,' the weakest moments are those in which Steinbeck is spouting a political idea directly at the reader. The book's real power comes from its slower, broader movement.
For 'Drive,' we needed the songs to dictate emotions and really bring you into the mind of The Driver; he's a unique and complicated guy, so the music itself had to be unique and complicated.
With the finale episode of 'Gravity Falls' our job as storytellers is to finish all the things we've started.
I think fiction isn't so good at being for or against things in general - the rhetorical argument a short story can make is only actualized by the accretion of particular details, and the specificity of these details renders whatever conclusions the story reaches invalid for wider application.
'Ape House' is an ambitious novel in several ways, for which it is to be admired, and it is certainly an easy read, but because Gruen is not quite prepared for the philosophical implications of her subject, it is not as deeply involving emotionally or as interesting thematically as it could be.
In Count Julian I simply proposed to create a text which would allow for diverse levels of reading.
The average action game doesn't much traffic in thematic grandiosity, but the BioShock games are different.
I think that's a hallmark of a really good story that it has readers that it speaks to more than others.
I think it's a little simplistic to explain a work through the psychology of its author. In other words, that Haneke has emotional problems, so I don't have to take his films seriously. By using this argument, the viewer retreats from the challenges of the film.
No film should be meaningless.
You want the story to be about something, have some deeper meaning, but there is also an emotional, almost instinctual, element, which is, does this story seize some part of you and compel you to get to the bottom of it?
I don't think good films have messages.
I read a lot of literary theory when I was in graduate school, especially about novels, and the best book I ever read about endings was Peter Brooks' 'Reading for the Plot. '
I don't enjoy putting my characters through hell unless there's a reason. I don't use violence or anything just for shock value. They're always a means to an end.
The interesting thing about movies, it's not always - y'know, you have to have structure etc and all those things, but an audience responds, in many ways, we walk away and certain things stay in our heads that are memorable.
I love films like 'Deliverance' where you can watch it over and over again and decode all of its many different meanings.
I don't think movies can ever be too intense, but people have to understand why you're showing them the things you are showing them.
'South Pacific' has a definite heaviness that people don't realize. It's got a seriousness and a message.
'The River Wild' was great, with Meryl Streep. That guy was really a bad dude who was ultimately sort of fundamentally impotent in a weird way. That was kind of interesting.
