I didn’t want the children to grow up and, when asked what their mother did, say, ‘Oh, Mom’s a gun moll in the movies.’
I was watching ‘Up In The Air’ and I thought, ‘Jesus, who’s the old gray-haired guy?’ And it was me. I never wear makeup for movies and now it’s starting to show.
I choose movies, I never choose roles. I look at the script. I look at the director. I look at the other actors – and then the role.
I just wear very nice pyjamas. When I’m at home, I love to watch movies and relax because when I’m modeling, I’m always travelling. When I’m not working I don’t put much make up, but I do love nail polish for that little bit of fun colour.
Really interesting genre films, especially monster movies, evoke the fears of the times intentionally. Our starting point was ‘Godzilla’ – the original movie was released less than 10 years after Hiroshima, and it’s a classic in Japan.
I love to star in movies, but I want to have good roles. It doesn’t help to get starring roles in something that’s no good. I mean, that will just kill you.
I personally think montages are one of movies’ great gifts to everyone. I think they’re so much fun and so effective when done right.
I would just love to do something where I’d have to train and work really hard and do one of those types of action movies, which a lot of women are doing now.
You can figure out who you were by which movies you loved when.
I love watching scary movies because you always wonder what happens next, and that’s what’s going to happen on ‘The Haunting Hour:’ you’re always going to want to know what happens next.
The ‘90s were just such an amazing time for movies. There was more money in movies and you could get away with things.
Pick up a camera. Shoot something. No matter how small, no matter how cheesy, no matter whether your friends and your sister star in it. Put your name on it as director. Now you’re a director. Everything after that you’re just negotiating your budget and your fee.
The most amazing thing for me is that every single person who sees a movie, not necessarily one of my movies, brings a whole set of unique experiences. Now, through careful manipulation and good storytelling, you can get everybody to clap at the same time, to hopefully laugh at the same time, and to be afraid at the same time.
If you’re sitting in your minivan, playing your computer animated films for your children in the back seat, is it the animation that’s entertaining you as you drive and listen? No, it’s the storytelling. That’s why we put so much importance on story. No amount of great animation will save a bad story.
I like something where I can really use my imagination and be an active participant in the construction of the monster and usually that’s in the world of the supernatural or the world of the fantastic, so that’s why those kinds of stories about demons and the supernatural appeal to me or maybe I’m really interested in that subject.
I don’t storyboard. I guess it dates back to my days in live television, where there was no possibility of storyboarding and everything was shot right on the spot – on the air, as we say – at the moment we were transmitting. I prefer to be open to what the actors do, how they interact to the given situation.
The directing of a picture involves coming out of your individual loneliness and taking a controlling part in putting together a small world. A picture is made. You put a frame around it and move on. And one day you die. That is all there is to it.
I think you kind of hope for people to gush over movies, but I think the opposite way is great sometimes, too. I’d rather have a movie that you’re angry about and that you’re talking about the next day, than something you forget about when the popcorn goes into the trash.
I always loved silent movies. I was not a specialist, but I loved them. And when I started directing, I became really fascinated by the format – how it works, the device of the silent movie. It’s not the same form of expression as a talkie. The lack of sounds makes you participate in the storytelling.
One of the problems with science fiction, which is probably one of the reasons why I haven’t done one for many, many years, is the fact that everything is used up. Every type of spacesuit is used up, every type of spacecraft is vaguely familiar, the corridors are similar, and the planets are similar.
People know that I have a great love for cinema. Not just for commercial cinema, but for the ‘cinema d’auteur.’ But to me, two of the great ‘auteurs’ are actually actors and they both happen to be French. One is Alain Delon and the other is Jean-Paul Belmondo.
I was going to go to a four-year college and be an anthropologist or to an art school and be an illustrator when a friend convinced me to learn photography at the University of Southern California. Little did I know it was a school that taught you how to make movies! It had never occurred to me that I’d ever have any interest in filmmaking.
In the next couple of years, part of every film’s process is going to be to adjust the images. And it’ll be to change the color of an actor’s tie or change the little smirky thing he’s doing with his mouth. Or you can put in more clouds or move the tree a little bit.
Filmmaking is a completely imperfect art form that takes years and, over those years, the movie tells you what it is. Mistakes happen, accidents happen and true great films are the results of those mistakes and the decisions that those directors make during those moments.
The truth is – I found myself doing these huge action-adventure movies, and um, and which are cool man. And I really love doing them. And thankfully I haven’t had too much dialogue, because if I had I would have really made a mess of it. You know what I mean?
