My only obligation is to my characters. And they came from where I have been.
Just because I was at an anti-police brutality protest, doesn’t mean I’m anti-police. We want justice, but stop shooting unarmed people.
One of the things about writing a novel is you can do it any way you want. It’s your voice that’s important and I see absolutely no reason why a screenplay can’t be the same. It makes it a hell of a lot easier when you’re the writer and the director.
I’m a human being with a conscience, and when I see murder, I cannot stand by, and I have to call the murdered the murdered, and I have to call the murderers the murderers.
I laugh all the time. I’m an easy laugher. You can find me on any set, because I’m always laughing.
In real life there are no bad guys. Everybody just has their own perspective.
The way I write is really like putting one foot in front of the other. I really let the characters do most of the work, they start talking and they just lead the way.
I am a writer, I deal in words. There is no word that should stay in word jail, every word is completely free. There is no word that is worse than another word. It’s all language, it’s all communication.
I’m very much a man of the moment. I can think about an idea for a year, two years, even four years all right, but what ever is going on with me the moment I write is gonna work it’s way into the piece.
To me, truth is the big thing. Constantly you’re writing something and you get to a place where your characters could go this way or that and I just can’t lie. The characters have gotta be true to themselves.
I try not to get analytical in the writing process. I try to just kind of keep the flow from my brain to my hand as far as the pen is concerned and go with the moment and go with my guts.
Emotion will always win over coolness and cleverness. It’s when a scene works emotionally and it’s cool and clever, then it’s great. That’s what you want.
If you love cinema as much as I do, and not many people do, and if you are focused and actually have something to offer, you will get somewhere with it.
What the internet has done is destroy film criticism. I would never have guessed that the profession of film criticism would be going the way of the dodo bird.
I won’t even think about acting in a role where I didn’t do a back story for a character.
I really become the characters when I’m writing them. I’ll become one or two of them more than others, I’m consistent that way.
I’ll write for a while and then I’ll find an appropriate song and in a weird way the music will keep me in the mood. I find music to define the mood of the movie, the rhythm the movie is going to play in.
If you’re trying to drop ten pages from a screenplay, it hurts like hell, but if you just put it away for a month and then take it out, you can do it just like that!
I’ve always equated the writing process with editing, sort of like when I get through editing the movie, that’s like my last draft of the screenplay.
I don’t want to be an old-man filmmaker, making old-man movies, and I don’t want to be the one not to know when to leave the party.
I’ve never used High Definition video, never, ever, ever, ever, ever. And I never will. I can’t stand that crap.