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 SANTAnd Later I Thought, I Can’t Think How Anyone Can Become a Director Without Learning the Craft of Cinematography.
More Gus Van Sant Quotes
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If it were up to the executives, they probably wouldn’t have directors at all.
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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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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.
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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.
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I used to take photographs just to remember people.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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When you get to be 23, 24 or 25, you start to freeze up and become an adult.
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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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I was once a shameless, full-time dope fiend.
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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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Sometimes getting upset with yourself is necessary when you face the truth.
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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.
GUS VAN SANT







