Why do I fall in love with every woman I see that shows me the least bit of attention?
I’ve kind of come to the conclusion that what passes for realism in movies has nothing to do with reality and that my stuff is more realistic than that.
The only way to do something interesting is not care if you fail.
People will say things after a screening that it affects them in a certain way, which is why I don’t like to explain what certain things are about. I want them to have that. It limits people’s ability to understand something if I say it’s “about this.” That’s happened to us a bunch on this.
I’m not a celebrity. I’m intentionally and defiantly not a celebrity. I don’t have any interest in it. I don’t have any talent for it. I keep my personal life out of my public life as cleanly as I can.
The way I work is not the way that you work, and the whole point of any creative act is that. What I have to offer is me, what you have to offer is you, and if you offer yourself with authenticity and generosity I will be moved.
Before you start production, you have characters you have created without actors in mind, then all of a sudden you’ve got actors. They bring an enormous amount in creating these characters, and creating the dynamics between the characters that you’ve written.
If you ever got me, you wouldn’t have a clue what to do with me.
I do have some theatrical background. I’ve written plays and seen plays and read plays. But I also read novels. One thing I don’t read is screenplays.
There’s a point I can get to where I start writing character and then through the dialogue, after all of this preparation, the thing starts to feel like it’s a character developing through the dialogue. A lot of character traits do come from writing dialogue, but I have to be ready to do it.
In a lot of movies, especially big studio ones, they’re not constructed in any other way than to get people to like them and then tell their friends. It’s a product.
Meet me in Montauk...
There really is only one ending to any story. Human life ends in death. Until then, it keeps going and gets complicated and there’s loss. Everything involves loss; every relationship ends in one way or another.
There are too many ideas and things and people. Too many directions to go. I was starting to believe the reason it matters to care passionately about something, is that it whittles the world down to a more manageable size.
We try to organize the world, which isn’t organized the way our brains want to organize it. We tell stories about the people in our lives, we project ideas onto them. We project relationships with people, we make our lives into stories. I don’t think we can avoid doing that.
Seriously, I don’t consider myself a writer. I don’t think I have writing talent. But I will continue to do it.
As a writer, or as a filmmaker, you have to present yourself, and part of what yourself is is what you’re interested in, or what you think is funny, or what you think is sad, or what you think is horrible.
I have a personality that tends to be somewhat compulsive, and I do tend to think in a circular way. I dwell on the same things over and over and I try to figure out different ways of looking at the same issue.
I want to create situations that give people something to think about.
I’m not into extreme sports or something. I just live a quiet life.