Question: You've worked with a lot of the same people since your early 20s (Bridges, Elswit, Tichenor, Sellar etc). Did you pick these people very carefully out of admiration for their work, or was it more coincidental? Especially with Elswit - did you immediately know this was your guy?
Answer: Elswit was the only one who had a resume. The rest of us all found each other and started getting to work - big dreams and all...
Elswit was nice enough to work with me and teach me everything. He was and is my hero.
Related posts tagged 'Filmmaking'
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Related posts tagged 'Filmmaking'
It’s very important that what you do is specific to the medium in which you’re doing it. And that you utilize what’s specific about that medium to do the work. And if you can’t think about why it should be done this way or needs to be done this way, then it doesn’t need to be done this way and then you should figure out what it is about this – if you want to do it – that needs to be told in the form of a movie.
this movie is funny and uplifting but it is also an honest look at grief and loss. I think we all relate. It is an uplifting film. I hope it males people feel less alone in their struggles.
I think Hitchcock had a good idea - he said shoot Love scenes like Murder Scenes and Murder Scenes like Love Scenes..maybe he felt that falling love was scary as shit.....? I think we've all felt that way sometime...
I had a good time working on Dogma, with Kevin and the guys. The only thing I remember about it was being naked for a LOOONG time on the ground... I fall out of the sky naked, so...
Tommy Wiseau is the master rewriter of history, because when he was making The Room I think he was completely sincere. He was aiming for [Marlon] Brando and James Dean and came out with something completely different. But when he realized that people were laughing at his film, he then rewrote his whole script [of his life]. ... He came out and said, "Oh, I intended it to be comedy." Whereas, in fact, he had kept it in theaters — on his own dime — for two weeks to qualify for the Oscars.
The Joe Dirt wig was itchy. And one time, I walked away from the set at a TV studio when we were doing some Dennis Miller stuff, and I got lost, and I had my janitor's uniform on, and the security guard wouldn't let me back into where I was supposed to go, and I didn't have a cell phone, so I had to sit there for 15 minutes until some PA came to look for me, and I had to explain to them that I was dressed as a janitor with a wig on, and that was an actual story, that sounds fake but it was funny to me. Long story short: I loved the wig, I thought it was hilarious, it was hard to wear all summer but it cracks me up. I think it's in some vault somewhere in the Smithsonian right now, surrounded...
Well, the first time we shot spherical was on the Master...it seemed like a good fit, evoking the old 50s films like Vertigo and North By Northwest...large format films but in a boxy frame....it was a nice change from the earlier films....I wanna shoot scope again though...maybe next time...
Absolutely. Weirder still was that my brain, slowly bleeding from a minor hemorrhage caused by an AVM (different from an AMA) was causing me to go insane, so that added to the madness. You truly don't even question your sanity when you are losing it. It's such a bizarre thing....
No, it’s not. There are so many pitfalls when a movie comes out that it’s hard to enjoy it when it comes out. Obviously if a movie does well and is critically well received I like it, but I’m so needful of it, that kind of response that it doesn’t feel good. It just feels less bad, you know? Because it feels really bad when people say mean things. Really, it feels bad. And I kind of wish that it didn’t, but it does for me.
Well that was great fun. It was great fun, because it just dragged on and on and on. And it was this fun bunch of people. First we went to our friend's farm, and we all stayed at her place for a handful of days while we recorded during the day and then at night we would have these magnificent meals and we would all tell stories. We had a LOT of great food, a lot of great wine and great stories. It went on until people started literally falling from their chairs and being taken away. And then we had to go to another place and do it again, we went to George's place, but then something happen and the whole party broke up, and George said "you don't have to go, do ya" and I didn't, so we just ki...
As I move through time, things change. I change, the world changes, the way the world sees me changes. I age, I fail, I succeed, I am lost. I have a moment of calm. The remnants of who I have been, however, hover, embarrass me, depress me, make me wistful. The inkling of who I will be depresses me, makes me hopeful, scares me, and embarrasses me. And here I stand at this crossroads, always embarrassed, wistful, depressed, angry, longing, looking back, looking forward.
I may make a decision and move from that crossroads, at which point I find myself instantly at another crossroads. Therefore there is only movement. A screenplay is movement. It is written in time and expresses a passage of ti...
Question: You wrote and directed Pootie Tang, as I'm sure you are aware. Do you plan on Writing and Directing anymore more films in the near future? Because that would be fantastic.
Answer: I would love yo make more movies. That is a FUCKING HARD JOB though, dude. Just to get it made. You can't even do anything else while you're tyring to get it made and then you probably won't. It's heart breaking. Then it takes a good 2 years to make and finish the movie then it maybe won't come out and then maybe it gets changed and worse than the movie not getting made, you made it, then it got changed into something you hated and then came out.
yeah. that's hard. if i can get a deal to make a movie th...
Loved having the breasts on my head. The make up dept. really made them authentic. Filled with condoms full of water. Everyone wanted to feel them, guys and women. At the end of the day when they were removed no one cared about me. It was then I realized how powerful it was to have breasts!
It was a joy. I didn't have to deal with any of the pressures and anxieties that I'm sure are a constant over there. Stepping off an elevator into a lobby with a giant MARVEL logo is already insane, it feels like you're being brought into the Pentagon. Then to finally meet the mucky mucks over there like Kevin Feige was so refreshing and uplifting....I've been pitching and babbling about high concept stuff for twenty years and I'd gotten so used to this dichotomy of the "suits," who loved sports and couldn't wait to leave work and who barely cared about the medium, versus the writers, who were the only nerds on a movie, constantly irritating the suits with their logical points about the orig...
Doing these other things [in art school] was a release, and I think it made me a better actor. Because when I was only acting, I was trying to do all of these things as an actor. I was on my own mission. I was acting for myself — to do a great performance for me, not for the movie. But that’s not my job as an actor. My job as an actor is to help the director achieve his or her vision. As soon as I got to direct my own films or escape the film world and into these other realms, when I came back to the film world, I could be pure about it. I don’t think my performance in Spring Breakers could’ve happened if I didn’t do all this other stuff.
I couldn’t have lent myself to that if I didn’t have...
when i did pootie tang i signed a deal that i served at their pleasure and had no creative control. It was worth it because I got to direct a studio movie at a young age and I learned. I don't sign deals like that anymore though.
I like the very moment when you think of a great idea. I also like the first time you show an audience the film, but only if it works. That also can be the worst moment of your life.
Sorry no actual update. I've heard for years there's a movie being developed, but never from anyone actually connected with it. Personally I love the movies, that character, and all the people involved. It's some of the most fun I've had, and most the most widely received movie I've been a part of. Not sure Mike is really looking to make a new one, but I'm sure if he did, everyone would show up for it.
I'm a big Woody Allen fan. I'm a big Alexander Payne fan, Paul Thomas Anderson... Soderbergh... but probably Woody more than anybody. People are calling TOP FIVE "Woody-ish" but if you're not stealing from Woody, you're not doing anything, you know? If you're not stealing from the Beatles, you're not making music!
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