I like to laze around. I think that’s a huge part of creativity. You have to let your mind relax and then another part of your brain suddenly connects with the solution you’re trying to find.
For me, the first fact of human existence is the human body. But if you embrace the reality of the human body, you embrace mortality, and that is a very difficult thing for anything to do because the self-conscious mind cannot imagine non-existence. It’s impossible to do.
I can’t imagine a life without humor. Especially if you have an existential understanding of life, you must acknowledge the absurdity of it all.
I work with my dreams or nightmares.
The idea of a mass audience was really an invention of the Industrial Revolution.
I’m not very well organized unless I’m plugged into a structure like the opera or a movie. When I’m doing that, I have to be organized.
The filmmaking process is a very personal one to me, I mean it really is a personal kind of communication. It’s not as though its a study of fear or any of that stuff.
Anybody who comes to the cinema is bringing they’re whole sexual history, their literary history, their movie literacy, their culture, their language, their religion, whatever they’ve got. I can’t possibly manipulate all of that, nor do I want to.
The desire to be loved is really death when it comes to art.
All romances end in tragedy. One of the key people in a romance becomes a monster sooner or later.
I’m very anti-religious because religion tends to disembody you.
For example I don’t work with William Hurt the same way that I will work with Viggo. They’re different guys and they work in different ways. So a good sensitive director has his general style and technique and personality that he uses but you don’t impose that on the actors.
When we talk about violence, we’re talking about the destruction of the human body, and I don’t lose sight of that. In general, my filmmaking is fairly body-oriented, because what you’re photographing is people, bodies.
You need language for thought, and you need language to anticipate death. There is no abstract thought without language and no anticipation. I think the anticipation of death without language would be impossible.
You start selling the movie before you make it.
I have a real aversion to ghosts because I don’t believe in them. I think ghosts are actually a religious concept, because it means you believe in an afterlife. And I don’t.
More blood! More blood!
Each kid has a different level of expertise and some of them are very raw and inexperienced and some are incredibly mature and experienced. So you just have to go with what they are rather than have some abstract technique that you’re going to try to apply to them.
Let’s put it this way, when I was casting, I cast Viggo first and then found someone who could play his wife, rather than the other way around. So for me he’s still the lead character.
The more unique your film is and unusual it is and difficult it is, the harder it is to get it financed. That’s why a lot of good filmmakers are doing television. They do HBO movies.