With ‘Good Will Hunting,’ Miramax made certain the recruited audience wasn’t expecting to laugh at Robin Williams like they normally do. From my limited experience, you can really blow test screenings by conducting them in the wrong way.
GUS VAN SANTYou’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.
More Gus Van Sant Quotes
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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.
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And Later I Thought, I Can’t Think How Anyone Can Become a Director Without Learning the Craft of Cinematography.
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Apparently there’s this kind of songbird that thinks it dies every time the sun goes down. In the morning, when it wakes up, it’s totally shocked to still be alive—so it sings this really beautiful song.
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I was once a shameless, full-time dope fiend.
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Everything’s changing so fast that it’s sometimes hard to keep up.
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Joanna Priestley is one of the most interesting and adept personal animators and filmmakers. I have enjoyed her work for years and been amazed at how she gets into her own thoughts onto the screen in a very elegant and focused way. You have to see this.
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Sometimes getting upset with yourself is necessary when you face the truth.
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No construction stiff working overtime takes more stress and straining than we did just to stay high.
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I used to take photographs just to remember people.
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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.
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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.
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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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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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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.
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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.
GUS VAN SANT