I am somebody who is not too fond of fancy or commercial stuff, like dancing around trees. Even in the 20 films I have done in South, none had any of such stuff.
I think the good thing about Dogme is that it forces you into an extreme sense of reality because there's no artificial light and no set design and all of those icings on the cake that you usually have on a movie.
When I went into film, it never occurred to me that I wouldn't be able to do whatever I wanted to do. Maybe that was a good thing in the beginning. I had blinders on, and I charged forward.
It's hard to get a film, you know, you need a very special film to be able to get that experimental. But, I would love to see that happen. I would love the opportunity to be more experimental than I am.
Todd Solondz is a film maker I've always loved because of how he balances darkness, humour and surrealism in his films.
I wanted to make these people real, not like they were in a painting. Like these are people who don't know they're in a period movie. Those concerns are incredibly immediate.
When I started making movies about weird people, I knew they were weird, I was infected with irony, and I wanted New York to notice.
For the theatrical experience to survive, spectacle films need to expand their definition of what they can be. They need to be unique and true voices of the filmmakers behind them. They can't just be copying what came before them.
'Dil Chahta Hai' was too raw. We only thought about the film. We never thought where the film was going to go. We wanted to make a film on our own terms.
You hear again and again that audiences want to see movies that are different, and critics say we make the same thing again and again in Hollywood, then you go and make something different, and you get kicked in the gut for it.
The plain truth is, 'Fruitvale Station' was made totally outside the Hollywood studio system, and every ounce of the picture feels authentic. The lives of the people involved in the movie will never be the same.
I really am passionate about making low-budget movies. You can try new stuff and unusual stuff, and you can break the rules.
I never planned my movies. I never selected subjects to win the National Award. I did films that made the masses happy.
[Jim Belushi] and I have a great thing going, and a really weird, offbeat story. [Living In Peril] is the type of movie that I don't even know if it would be made today. Just a very odd film. But a very fun movie.
When you move handheld, and the director of photography has the courage to shoot with no lights, the set becomes a space of creativity and freedom where actors can move wherever they want to move.
That's what I always loved about [Federico] Fellini's films: You see the weird joy of the weird filmmaking family and the abstract craziness that goes along with it, and there's something about it that's quite beautiful.
First of all, I never make a movie for awards consideration.
I do not want myself to be restricted to a pigeonholed kind of filmmaker.
I truly believe that the story behind 'The Room' is more fascinating and bizarre than 'The Room.'
When Orson Welles was acting in 'Compulsion,' the director Richard Fleischer let him just take over and direct the courtroom scenes. To be able to see Welles - who knew more about directing than anyone - direct himself and the other actors, it was unbelievable and unforgettable.
When my films don't work it's usually because I tried some very experimental idea. I tried new ideas and they just didn't work, as opposed to trying to do something conventional and having it be so conventional nobody wanted to see it.
I don't have a typical filmmaker background. I didn't grow up with a super eight camera or a video camera. I didn't start cutting movies when I was four or five.
I learned from making a few of these low-budget videos early on that the best way to go about doing it is just to keep it honest and real.
I'm going in a really weird I-don't-know-where direction, but I prefer anything [different] from how standardized filmmaking has become.
If you want to do a film, steal a camera, steal raw stock, sneak into a lab and do it!
