"There's a careless optimism in the [Hollywood] executives' minds when they spend this money.  It's pin money to them, these options or development deals they make to get the script, they feel they can throw it away.  If it gets done somewhere else then they'll get some of their money back."

"If you get inside the story and feel it, it doesn’t matter what age you are."

"It's better not to know so much about what things mean or how they might be interpreted [in art] or you'll be too afraid to let things keep happening. Psychology destroys the mystery, this kind of magic quality. It can be reduced to certain neuroses or certain things, and since it is now named and defined, it's lost its mystery and the potential for a vast, infinite experience."

"We were talking about Jack Nicholson, and that level of aspiration for the film [based on my novel].  What happened was a change in the hierarchy at Warner Brothers, and the people who had brought the project in no longer had power.  That was the first time that happened.  But it happened over and over.  You don't know what to believe, and you never know for sure why you're getting turned down, or even why they were interested in you in the first place."

"I really dig [Franz Kafka] a lot.  Some of his things are the most thrilling combos of words I have ever read.  If Kafka wrote a crime picture, I’d be there.  I’d like to direct that for sure."

"There's an old adage in Hollywood, 'Ready, fire, aim'."

"Some might argue that novels shouldn't have to have a great ending, that we should just enjoy spending time with the characters.  Sorry ... We demand great endings of our movies and our plays, and we'll continue to do so of our novels."

"In Hollywood, more often than not, they're making more kinds of traditional films, stories that are understood by people. And the entire story is understood. And they become worried if even for one small moment something happens that is not understood by everyone. But what's so fantastic is to get down into areas where things are abstract and where things are felt, or understood in an intuitive way that, you can't, you know, put a microphone to somebody at the theatre and say 'Did you understand that?' but they come out with a strange, fantastic feeling and they can carry that, and it opens some little door or something that's magical and that's the power that film has."

"You go in with these extremely high hopes.  I don't know why after a while you have those hopes, because it's very hard to continue to be serious about writing screenplays.  You get cynical, and you feel like the money's the only thing."

"You feel very alive constantly being one decision away from disaster."

"The usual negative attitude toward anything that you present to folks in Hollywood: They say 'no' all the time; very rarely do they say 'yes.'  They're in the business of saying 'no;' they're in the business of not making movies."

"Be true to yourself. Find your own voice and be true to that voice. Never take a bad idea, but never turn down a good idea. And, of course, have final cut."

"Something Ben Stiller had said to me a few years earlier: 'When you're on a film set and you've got to make endless decisions, you have to realise that you can't be worried about people's feelings.'"

"For Lynch … His refusal to interrogate the images, sounds and ideas that make themselves known to him—often during the actual process of shooting—accounts not only for their uniqueness, but also for his occasional inability to articulate their precise meaning.  His desire is to 'speak directly' through the films, combined with a faith in the audience's own eyes and ears."

"With its never-ending stream of reboots and sequels, modern culture has heightened the ideal that artists have a duty to capitalize on success."

"Not only am I rarely creatively satisfied, but satisfaction comes with small victories.  There's usually more frustration than applause or happiness."

"Whether it's through an Instagram post or documentary film, the heart of the mission is constant: our job is to tell a story.  I'm eager to see what other avenues open up to tell those stories."

"Your job [as an actor] is to create an interesting, captivating character that serves the text.  That's it."

"Like Cliffhanger.  More people have seen how they did the helicopter shot in that than people have seen the movie!  Magicians keep their secrets to themselves.  And they know that as soon as they tell, someone will say, 'Are you kidding me?  That's so simple."  It's horrifying to me, that they do that.  People don't realize it, but as soon as they hear or see that, something dies inside them.  They're deader than they were.  They're not, like, happy to know about this stuff.  They're happy not to know about it.  And they shouldn't know about it.  It's nothing to do with the film!  And will only ruin the film!  Why would they talk about it?"

"There are also amazing highs; a fantastic piece of dialogue, a great idea, a shot that really works.  You have to hang on to those moments and learn to push the anxiety away."

"The antihero is always going to come back because it's an easy crutch.  It also appeals to people in the film business.  Especially the film business, because it's an immoral business."

"You're very fortunate if you have a partner who understands what you do and who works with you through the struggle of making and wanting to make."

"To give a sense of place, to me, is a thrilling thing. And a sense of place is made up of details. And so the details are incredibly important. If they're wrong, then it throws you out of the mood. And so the sound and music and color and shape and texture, if all those things are correct and a woman looks a certain way with a certain kind of light and says the right word, you're gone, you're in heaven. But it's all the little details."

"More than ever I see still and moving images becoming one and the same.  Having experience and vision in both mediums will be crucial for most people over the coming years."

"Not everyone in the movie business can do comedy; certainly not everyone understands it."

"I don't think that we can minimize the value of what happens when we normalize, through entertainment, other cultures and orientations."

"Some of my favorite directors of the 1970s became rich and famous and lost touch with other human beings not like themselves.  [With social media,] I can now maintain a connection to other people, not just in the U.S. but all over the world.  It allows me insight into someone who's 15 in Thailand."

"Across genres, for one reason or another, various filmmakers—sometimes even those considered the most visual of directors—have drawn on devices dating back 2,500 years to the days of Hellenic theater because there are limitations to showing; showing can't always get us inside a character, or inside a character's story."

"Even making small films is an intense thing."

"It makes me uncomfortable to talk about meanings and things. It's better not to know so much about what things mean. Because the meaning, it's a very personal thing, and the meaning for me is different than the meaning for somebody else."

"The things you're not supposed to talk about in films are the same things you're not supposed to talk about at dinner parties: religion, politics and sex."

"That's the case for most content creators. Film makers. Artists. Writers. Musicians. We've made it easier than ever to make stuff, and harder than ever to make enough money to live."

"The movies have not undermined the influence of fiction.  On the contrary, they have extended its field, carrying the ideas which are already current among readers to those too young, too impatient, or too uneducated to read."

"We're basically abolishing the full time musician/writer/filmmaker. We're abolishing the full time creative. That's what's happening.  We're giving money to tech platforms to become 'Unicorns' off the backs of creatives, and driving creatives out of business."

"The Oscars are like a political campaign.  Winning an Oscar is partly to do with how good your film is and partly to do with how tenacious you are during awards season."

"There is a lot of talk in creative fields about separating those who are creative and make things from all the other people, but that's fucking bullshit.  I don't think you can be a good designer if you don't have a business sense; I don't think you can be a good director if you don't have a sense of production.  I think it's all a part of the job and, frankly, we all have the capacity for creative output."

"I know the next decade will bring some wild changes—both personally and industry-wide—as the vehicles with which we consume content keep changing.  That directly informs what I do for a living, and my hope is not just to keep up, but to really engage with new channels, mediums, and people."

"As well as talking for the sake of it, too often what people say in films doesn't remotely resemble what they would say in real life."

"[My films] mean different things to different people. Some mean more or less the same things to a large number of people. It's okay. Just as long as there's not one message, spoon-fed. That's what films by committee end up being, and it's a real bummer to me ... Life is very, very complicated, and so films should be allowed to be, too."

"I started working as a production assistant on independent features and that taught me what I didn't want to do.  I was turned off by certain things in production, in particular the attitudes that I saw on so many crews.  I read an interview with Jim Jarmusch and he talked about production being there to serve the film and not the other way around; that really resonated with me."

"Music videos are what made me want to go into filmmaking."

"At the end of the day, we're probably not changing the world with most of the images we're making.  Instead, I think the main opportunity to contribute to the greater good is through the relational aspect of what we do as artists.  We meet and interact with people form all over the world, all the time.  The ability to go beyond the creation of images and to develop a camaraderie with people ... is important.  Those relationships will likely last longer than the typical lifespan of an image."

New York Biotopes: Symbiotic Coexistence

"I'm trying to find truths that are underrepresented on screen, to embrace nuance and ambiguity."

"Films are relatively short, and are comparable to long short stories or short novellas."

"The movie or TV show is the finished product; a screenplay is not.  Scripts are only one step in a complex chain of events leading to the final show or film."

"I was used to uniting an audience with humour; this time, I wanted to unite an audience with humanity."

The View from the Cheap Seats

Saving Mr. Banks

"As an artist, you want as many people to see your work as possible with no compromise.  .... I don't want to .... have it watered down, and follow a soap opera, and have all the edges filed down and have someone interfere.  ....  Delivering the exact thing that I made ... that's so important to me, you know, that's, I said, the ideal of the most beautiful and purest thing. And it's how little it can be ruined from your brain to the observer. And that's the way you do everything yourself, really, because, you know, I've probably only produced and directed to protect my writing, the idea, you know?"

"There's no upside to holding back plot.  ....  If you've got a great idea, that great idea doesn't wait until season two.  It goes in the third act.  You can keep inventing more plot, but you can't invent more audience.  You have to have the faith in yourself... that there will be another good idea."

"Messages are for Western Union." (on social commentary in films)

"People say, 'I just want to see the facts.'  And I say, 'well, I'll send an email.'  If you're going to tell a story in visual terms, it should be exciting.  And I don't think anybody should have to apologize for that."

"I'm a big believer in form following content.  You try to find some essential truth and then figure out the best way of getting there."

"Sometimes when you get blocked, the road around the block ends up being more interesting than things might have been if the doors in front of you opened up.  Sometimes you find secret passageways.  You find work-arounds."