black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

If it were up to the executives, they probably wouldn’t have directors at all.

Gus Van Sant

Everything’s changing so fast that it’s sometimes hard to keep up.
GUS VAN SANT

Hard Something Sometimes
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.
GUS VAN SANT

Beautiful Morning Song
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
When you get to be 23, 24 or 25, you start to freeze up and become an adult.
GUS VAN SANT

Adult Adults Freeze
Even 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.
GUS VAN SANT

Actors Movie Viewpoints
I used to take photographs just to remember people.
GUS VAN SANT

People Photograph Remember
I try to shoot the first rehearsal because people are more spontaneous. People in real life don’t really know where they are going to be either positioning themselves or how they will be saying their words. When people goof during the first take, it usually looks realistic.
GUS VAN SANT

People Real 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
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.
GUS VAN SANT

Fun Stories Track
Yeah, I try to be really calm.
GUS VAN SANT

Calm Trying Yeah
Modern-day cinema takes the form of a sermon. You don’t get to think, you only get to receive information.
GUS VAN SANT

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

Dope Full Shameless
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
If it were up to the executives, they probably wouldn’t have directors at all.
GUS VAN SANT

Directors Executives Probably
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
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’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

Feelings People Real
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
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.
GUS VAN SANT

Doubt Film Thinking
Casting the locals is my primary concern because all the other things you assume will be manageable.
GUS VAN SANT

Assuming Casting Concern
It’s hard to speculate as a human about the afterlife because you’re not in it. And it’s probably as wild and wacky as you could imagine. The idea that people have figured it out, I’m not sure if I can fathom that.
GUS VAN SANT

Afterlife Idea Ideas People
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 SANT

Blow Experience Hunting Laughing Limited
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
I’ve always been interested in how to present something that relates to our reality – which is not really… I don’t even know if documentary itself does as good a job. It has its own problems in trying to get at the reality of the situation.
GUS VAN SANT

Jobs Reality Trying
I’m going in a really weird I-don’t-know-where direction, but I prefer anything [different] from how standardized filmmaking has become.
GUS VAN SANT

Different Filmmaking Really Weird
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

If it were up to the executives, they probably wouldn’t have directors at all.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

If it were up to the executives, they probably wouldn’t have directors at all.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Gus Van Sant Quotes