The buried code of many American films has become: If I kill you, I have won and you have lost. The instinctive ethical code of traditional Hollywood, the code by which characters like James Stewart, John Wayne and Henry Fonda lived, has been lost.
Sarah Palin lacked the preparation or temperament to be one heartbeat away from the presidency, but what she possessed in abundance was the ability to inflame political passions and energize the John McCain campaign with star quality.
I began to realize that I had tended to avoid some people because of my instant conclusions about who they were and what they would have to say. I discovered that everyone, speaking honestly and openly, had important things to tell me.
Ridley Scott’s ‘Prometheus’ is a magnificent science-fiction film, all the more intriguing because it raises questions about the origin of human life and doesn’t have the answers.
What a terrible thing it would be to be the Pope! What unthinkable responsibilities to fall on your shoulders at an advanced age! No privacy. No seclusion. No sin.
Because we can engineer genetics, because we can telecast real lives-of course we must, right? But are these good things to do? The irony is, the people who will finally answer that question will be the very ones produced by the process.
In thinking about ‘depressing movies,’ many people don’t realize that all bad movies are depressing, and no good movies are.
A corner is important. It provides privacy and an anchor and lets you exist independently of the room.
I wear a pedometer, a little device that counts every step. It works as a goad, because you walk additional distances to pile up the numbers. The average person walks 2,000 to 3,000 steps a day. I walk 10,000 steps a day. I have lost a lot of weight as a result.
Socrates told us, “the unexamined life is not worth living.” I think he’s calling for curiosity, more than knowledge. In every human society at all times and at all levels, the curious are at the leading edge.
Sometimes two people will regard each other over a gulf too wide to ever be bridged, and know immediately what could have happened, and that it never will.
Nicholas Sparks recently went on record as saying he is a greater novelist than Cormac McCarthy. This is true in the same sense that I am a better novelist than William Shakespeare.
No matter what they’re charging to get in, it’s worth more to get out.
Why has Scandinavia been producing such good thrillers? Maybe because their filmmakers can’t afford millions for CGI and must rely on cheaper elements like, you know, stories and characters.
When we’re discussing who to invite to a dinner party, my wife Chaz and I sometimes use the shorthand, ‘good value for money,’ which indicates guests expected to be entertaining.
The movie Ed Wood, about the worst director of all time, was made to prepare us for Stargate.
Open-heart surgery is now part of a typical life experience for many people. Folks talk casually about ‘having a stent put in,’ as if they had their tires rotated.
One difference between film noir and more straightforward crime pictures is that noir is more open to human flaws and likes to embed them in twisty plot lines.
On this ancient and miraculous world, where such beautiful natural and living things have evolved, something has gone wrong when life itself is used as a manufacturing process.
It’s not often a thriller keeps me wound up as well as ‘Headhunters’ did. I knew I was being manipulated and didn’t care. It was a pleasure to see how well it was being done.