The real trouble with film school is that the people teaching are so far out of the industry that they don’t give the students an idea of what’s happening.
That’s what noir feels like to me. It feels like some kind of recurring dream, with very strong archetypes operating. You know, the guilty girl being pursued, falling, all kinds of stuff that we see in our dreams all the time
So I like to try to go back and develop pure visual storytelling. Because to me, it’s one of the most exciting aspects of making movies and almost a lost art at this point
All we ever get told is that they’re valued and we support them, and as they’re represented on television, they’re true-blue and honorable. Which is true, for the most part.
The biggest mistake in student films is that they are usually cast so badly, with friends and people the directors know. Actually you can cover a lot of bad direction with good acting
When you make a movie outside the system and it’s successful critically or a moderate financial success, you usually have to go back into the system and make a big hit
You’ve got to remind yourself all the time that you’re being measured against the fashions of the day, and if your work truly has any kind of staying power, well, people will be talking about it in 20, 30 years.
