The best films of any kind, narrative or documentary, provoke questions.
Life, like poker has an element of risk. It shouldn’t be avoided. It should be faced.
The more you do your homework, the more you’re free to be intuitive. But you’ve got to put the work in.
The Zionist Tulsa Jew who’s pugnacious is a reality. I grew up around it. And I think it’s really, really funny and surprising and unlikely.
When people come together too young, they try to become one person. As you get older, you realize that you don’t want to become one person because then you lose the person you are.
You always end up getting involved in things because of, you know, the strange things your life brings you into contact with.
The more you can create that magic bubble, that suspension of disbelief, for a while, the better.
I never think that a film should answer questions for you. I think it should make you ask a lot of questions.
Instead of telling the world what you’re eating for breakfast, you can use social networking to do something that’s meaningful.
Sometimes we don’t see certain things until we’re ready to see them in a certain way.
You know when somebody really knows what they’re drawing from and you can feel it when you see the movie.
Sometimes creativity is a compulsion, not an ambition.
I like it when the deeper you go with the character, the more you see the layers start to peel away.
I don’t smoke and I don’t want to smoke. I am not a fan of gratuitous smoking in films.
I almost forgot what it’s like to be proud of my government.
I studied French forever, and when do I ever speak French? I clearly should have studied Spanish. I wish I had stuck with music, because that would still be great. I really wish I had learned to surf earlier in my life.
I’ve always thought of acting as more of an exercise in empathy, which is not to be confused with sympathy. You’re trying to get inside a certain emotional reality or motivational reality and try to figure out what that’s about so you can represent it.
I always felt that acting was an escape, like having the secret key to every door and permission to go into any realm and soak it up. I enjoy that free pass.
The incentive for business is not, and cannot, be anything other than the root incentive for all business: they must profit.