One of the things that is devastating is I realise I haven’t been living a different life than when I was, like, 12. I’m shocked at how reclusive I’ve been since then. I was unaware of it until recently.
GUS VAN SANTEven when you’re making a movie about life, death is a presence, and I guess it’s part of my dramatic viewpoint. I’m not sure why exactly.
More Gus Van Sant Quotes
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The area of teenage life is not necessarily rarefied; we’ve all gone through that period. It’s not as rarefied as a western or a space adventure or a gangster film, but it has its own dynamic.
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Now the music industry is sort of like a Craigslist venture, right? Where you’re making your own records and selling them online.
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When you’re on a film and you’re doubting something, it’s usually because you don’t think the audience is going to like it.
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The biopic also wasn’t a form that I necessarily believed in, because you can never really get it right, you know? It’s also a form that’s very popular – the straight-ahead biopic.
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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.
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If it were up to the executives, they probably wouldn’t have directors at all.
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Casting the locals is my primary concern because all the other things you assume will be manageable.
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I’m going in a really weird I-don’t-know-where direction, but I prefer anything [different] from how standardized filmmaking has become.
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I was once a shameless, full-time dope fiend.
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You’re following your track, the story, your only plan, your map for the audience, and all the other stuff is, like, the fun stuff: the costumes, the locations, the set-dressing and the actors. They can all be variable as you like if you stick – however roughly – to the path.
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Modern-day cinema takes the form of a sermon. You don’t get to think, you only get to receive information.
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A person’s sexuality is so much more than one word “gay.” No one refers to anyone as just “hetero” because that doesn’t say anything. Sexual identity is broader than a label.
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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.
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A lot of times, you’re not necessarily off the page because you haven’t been able to take the time to prepare a character. It’s very easy to find even great actors reading it more like a reading. Things aren’t really coming alive yet, even though you know they will.
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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