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I’ve told people who have just started to make a film that the one thing you might experience is this feeling that everybody is conspiring against you, because you’re not necessarily able to tell what’s real and what’s not.

Gus Van Sant

I have this new theory about films. It’s almost like astrology, where if we started on a Tuesday the film will be different than if we started on a Wednesday. Not because of the planets. It’s that sometimes you start with the wrong balance and the whole thing gets messed up.
GUS VAN SANT

Astrology Balance Tuesday
Once you’re directing, you’re kind of in a certain mode, where you’re taking whatever is on the page and forming it into the film that you think it might want to be. So whether it’s my writing or not, I still try to work with it in the same way.
GUS VAN SANT

Thinking Trying Writing
Gay marriage is the last bastion of, to me… as a legal, ceremonial, sentimental and religious side, it’s one of the last steps. Retaining your job being one of the earlier steps, like, not getting kicked out of your job because you’re gay.
GUS VAN SANT

Gay Jobs Religious Retain
When I grew up in the ’60s, we were actually dominated by this, you know, sort of conforming ’50s culture, even though we were like trying to express our own culture, like, the dominant culture was the thing that was forming us. And I think that that’s true today.
GUS VAN SANT

Culture Thinking Trying
If you don’t have the story and the unfolding of the trajectory of the saga, it’s like getting in a car and not having any gas.
GUS VAN SANT

Car Stories Unfolding
Free time keeps me going. It’s just something that’s always been a part of my life. I was originally a painter, and I made films sort of as an extension of that, and then I started to try to make dramatic films because the early films were experimental films.
GUS VAN SANT

Dramatic Film Trying
Silent is about needing to make a scene shorter by having physical things to cut to. That way, you can manipulate a character to the other side of the room. But, if they say the wrong thing, it might locate that action in a particular part of the scene. It’s a mechanical need.
GUS VAN SANT

Character Cutting Needs
The things that inform student culture are created and controlled by the unseen culture, the sociological aspects of our climbing culture, our ‘me’ generation, our yuppie culture, our SUVs, or, you know, shopping culture, our war culture.
GUS VAN SANT

Climbing Shopping War
In rare cases, I’ve had music before I shot the movie. I think that for ‘Good Will Hunting’ I had an Elliot Smith record or a couple of them and I just somehow felt like the sound had something to it that reminded me of the story. So in that case there was music beforehand.
GUS VAN SANT

Couple Hunting Thinking
I’d come into filmmaking as a painter so, for me, making ‘Good Will Hunting’ was experimental because I didn’t know how to do it.
GUS VAN SANT

Actors Hunting Movie
You never look at the backside of a mirror because when you do, it’ll affect your future because you’re looking at yourself backwards. No, you’re looking at your inner self and you don’t recognize it because you’ve never seen it before.
GUS VAN SANT

Looks Mirrors Self
In high school, I read ‘Silas Marner’ and I was very attracted to this character – he was very rundown and he’d just stop, and things would happen around him.
GUS VAN SANT

Character High School
I think over the course of 14 films, I’m returning to a place that I know to tell a story… the same way Spielberg returned to fantasy, Lucas returned to the ‘Star Wars’ saga, or John Ford returned to the western.
GUS VAN SANT

Stars Thinking War
I was once a shameless, full-time dope fiend.
GUS VAN SANT

Dope Full Shameless
Free time keeps me going.
GUS VAN SANT

Free Time
Now the music industry is sort of like a Craigslist venture, right? Where you’re making your own records and selling them online.
GUS VAN SANT

Records Selling Venture

I’ve told people who have just started to make a film that the one thing you might experience is this feeling that everybody is conspiring against you, because you’re not necessarily able to tell what’s real and what’s not.

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I’ve told people who have just started to make a film that the one thing you might experience is this feeling that everybody is conspiring against you, because you’re not necessarily able to tell what’s real and what’s not.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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