Film Directors From The United States

"The pathbreaking movie director Joan Micklin Silver got to have a career that almost no woman was allowed to have, and did not get to have the career that she deserved. Such is the paradox of the pioneer: You get to go where very few have gone before, but when you get there, there’s nobody to pull you up or push you ahead. You make your own way, and withstand the indifference, the hostility, the condescension, and the people who treat you as a curiosity or a slightly troubling anomaly."

"It's a human truth that romantic fantasies are very hard to let go of and while it would be very nice to say Izzy, observing the difference between the two men realize that immediately that Sam was the better choice. I mean maybe you know maybe you work more rationally than than Izzy I don't know. But I mean the thing is that that you don't always do what's good for you, you know you don't always do what's right for you and sometimes you have to grow past it or go through something in order to reject it. (discussing the lead character's decision making in the film Crossing Delancey)"

"Abstract notions of feminism never interested Joan; specific women and their stories did. Yet without setting out to do so, Joan Silver influenced generations of women to come. She was a trail-blazer, a risk-taker, a champion of other women directors. And always as quietly confident as she was the day I met her some fifty years ago."

"I came of age for film, at a time when the sexism was pretty strong. And although I could get work as a Writer, I couldn’t get work as a Director at all. And I had the experience of watching young men who had made shorts as I had, prize winning shorts, as I had, moving on to directing films and I couldn’t do it. And, and my husband, Ray [Ray Silver], was… became angry, and he said, “You know, maybe you can do it, maybe you can’t, but everybody should have a chance to try for the brass ring.”"

"We were so young and had never produced anything, and Joan was infinitely patient and remarkably assured on the set. We learned so much about movies from her. And she really knew how to talk to actors. John [Heard] could be tricky — he was moody and had a tough reputation. But he never gave her a moment of trouble. (memories of the production of Chilly Scenes of Winter)"

"Joan Micklin Silver was one of the most courageous artists I ever knew. She knew she could prevail at a time when women were not being taken seriously as film directors. We have all been deprived of seeing so many many other great movies that Joan was ready and prepared to give us."

"Hollywood, of course, expected women to be collaborative, but had no intention of rewarding them for it. So she stayed independent. (Hollywood's ignorance of Joan Micklin Silver's talents and ambition)"

"Great American filmmaker not nearly revered enough, I think she should be talked about alongside John Cassavetes as people who really moved the needle for American Indie Cinema, like after World War II and before Sundance."

"I love horror and I felt like I had a really good idea about how to make something scary, but also I’m very measured, especially with a story like this, about what is appropriate and what is not appropriate."

"I would have hated getting the question, ‘Isn’t it so timely right now, with all these deaths going on?’ That’s not why we made it. But I think it will happen again – a summer like last summer. I think that the story we’re telling was about that: the fact that it’s cyclical. It could come out next year, it could come out any time and still be relevant."

"He’s a person, which is the whole point of this movie. He’s not just some like floating demon slayer, and it’s a really tricky balance…He’s someone who clearly has a lot of pain, and that’s something I find really interesting about him as a character."

"It’s not necessarily overtly racist, but it is shocking the way people have talked to me in my position as a director. People who work for me. Especially on a movie like this, where Jordan was the only other person of colour at the level of decision-making on the movie. And that’s unacceptable, frankly."

"People treat actors and people in the public eye differently from how they’d treat anybody else in their lives. You would never come up to a stranger, throw your arm around them and say, ‘Hey, buddy, lemme get this picture.’ You think it’s OK to do that?"

"This [Racism] is a systemic, institutionalized problem that we are all fully aware of."

"I hope to use my ‘celebrity’ to motivate people and contribute to moving our global society back from the brink. I am surprised environment is not at the top of the agenda. What is more important than food and clean air? We need a big push."

"I think I’m somewhat defined by my race for sure, and I’m good with that and I actually want that to be a part. I think that should be fodder for our work — we should use all aspects of ourselves. I’m always trying to find a place where that’s actually an impact on what I’m doing as opposed to going, “Well, we’re all just people and we’re the same.”"

"There seems to be a prejudice against television directors. Now there are a lot of bad television directors. If you do the same sort of television for a long enough time, something happens to your imagination. That's why I won't even consider certain television shows anymore. The people I like to work with are the ones who have some sort of vision about what they're doing."

"My fascination is with relationships at their most microcosmic. The more epic, the more uninteresting the film-making becomes. It becomes about getting the perfect crane shot."

"I want my movies to feel like you’re paratrooping into somebody’s life."

"The genesis of the vast majority of my films is an actor as a muse that I want to work with. Humpday was Mark Duplass, Outside In was his brother, Jay Duplass, this movie was Marc Maron, who I’ve been really wanting to make a movie with for three and a half years. Then there’s other things, like a territory I want to explore or an element I want to return to, like improvisation, which I haven’t done since Your Sister’s Sister."

"As a filmmaker, I really am most interested in humans and their deep desire to connect to each other. How do they get through their own lives? Where have I come and where am I now? And where do I want to go from here? It’s all of those humanistic questions."

"Good drama (and comedy) often comes from the simple act of placing characters in a situation that is not usual nor comfortable for them."

"In my family, and especially when I go back to China, it's always like, prepare your stomach, because it's the way that they express love."

"Sometimes America is so great because it brings all of us together, but sometimes it can be so limiting because it puts labels on things."

"There's so little representation of people who look like me behind the camera that it makes you want to say yes to any opportunity out of desperation. It puts you in a situation where you can't make your best work. Diversity for cheap."

"I can't speak for everybody, and I don't want to say it for an entire culture, but for me, coming from an immigrant family, it's very difficult to go find your voice, which requires a lot of failure."

"Americans always talk about family love being unconditional, and I realized that I didn't feel that way."

"The questions I want to ask will revolve around humans, connection, relationships, family, and stories - what are the stories we tell ourselves and each other?"

"We all have different aspects of ourselves, and who we are to different people in our lives, at different stages of our lives."

"There have been moments where I laughed at my own family's culture, though it's hard to separate out whether something funny is cultural, or just my grandma specifically."

"People are always asking me about the importance of representation and identity in relation to making The Farewell and of course those things are really important to me – thinking about my identity and exploring my identity in the west. But I would love it if men – white men – were also asked the same questions as me. They should be asked these questions so they can be more conscientious about how they’re representing people, how they’re not representing people, and aware of their own blind spots."

"It’s so much easier to tell a fish-out-of-water story when the person is blond and blue-eyed going to an Asian country, for example. But what is it like when you look the same as those people, and you’re expected to fit in? How do you put that interiority on screen?"

"So whatever decision you make, you're going to be able to find stories or signs to say 'I did the right thing,' because we have to believe we did the right thing in order to survive."

"I think people have this romanticism of the homeland, and that’s just not the reality for me. Every time I go back to China, I feel more American than ever, so it’s this question of, ‘Well, where is home?’ We’re always searching for it and never fully fitting in."

"One thing that I was aware of was that, whatever I do as an Asian American actor, I should try my best to bring something positive to the image of an Asian American."

"Of course, it’s very nice. Because I’ve done this for a long time and just in life, I’ve learned to live with very little expectation. Then, you’re not let down. The more you expect, the more you’re going to be let down and disappointed. When everything comes together, it’s just a nice bonus. A lot of it has to do with trust because of who these people are. There’s an integrity behind it that I feel is genuine. I trust my own instincts. I saw the passion and the commitment they put into making sure that show is as good as it could be, in a respectful way, to Bruce Lee and the legacy that he left behind."

"I never set out to be an actor. I always knew that I wanted to direct and produce movies. I’m well aware that I was very lucky. My career started out with a bang and I’ve had incredible opportunities to do very good projects and work with wonderful people. I would be lying to say that I wasn’t aware of the success and the fame that it brought me and the cast members of 21 Jump Street. At the height of the show, we literally couldn’t go anywhere. We all enjoyed that, but I had enough sense to know that all of that would be gone, at some point. Nothing lasts forever. So, I continued to keep working in any way that I could, but I never really thought of the trajectory of what kind of career I was going to have, and certainly not where I ended up today."

"I'm gay in my art and straight in my life."

"My favorite scene is the one I’m shooting at the moment. When people ask me which of my movies is my favorite, I always say, “the next one”. Perhaps the same is true of every scene. The next one is perfect. It is finished in my mind without a flaw. Untainted by the reality of time running out, actors forgetting their lines, light dropping fast, wagon stuck in the mud or mismatched piece of clothing that must be found and brought to set."

"In Hollywood they throw money at problems – on independent films you’ve got to use your brain in pre-production. The big mistake kids make is they fight to get the money to make a movie and they don’t prepare it properly. All the films except Death Curse and Stanley, I always took six to eight weeks prep. Where I knew everything and I had blocked the shots on paper. Kids just start right in and can’t figure out why they’re over budget or schedule. You’ll never hear this from anybody else – I’ve made way over 15 films, I’ve never been one day over schedule or one dollar over budget. I don’t think there’s a filmmaker in the world that can make that statement!"

"I was told they'd hired somebody for Leonardo and then they fired him. And then they hired another guy and then they fired him, too. So they said, "We're still looking for this guy to do the turtle." I thought, "What the hell does a turtle sound like?""

"We need to change environmental policy. We need to have scientists who are working on massive data and research projects. All of those need to happen in parallel with your everyday citizen doing their part. That’s what I mean, is that for those people who find it overwhelming to look at environmental issues on a global scale, we need to scale it down and make it tangible. There needs to continue to be these other processes happening; people working on climate change, people working on environmental law, people working on ecosystem protection, the creation of marine parks. Whatever it is that has a greater impact. For the everyday person, just start, please. Start something."

"I can understand that people get overwhelmed very quickly when you start to talk about an enormous issue like climate change. But I suggest they just choose one change and implement that in their lives, such as deciding not to eat bluefin tuna or shrimp anymore because it’s unsustainable. Then when that becomes simply part of your life, chose something else to implement. Make informed choices and make them part of your everyday life and don’t assume others are doing it for you."

"Whenever I look at any environmental story, whether it’s oceans, jungles, Antarctica, or the Amazon, I look at the human side to translate it in a relevant way for human beings. It makes it more relevant and compelling to people who are watching, listening, reading."

"“I don't suffer the same things that they do, but I stand with them to defend and protect [their lives and homeland]"

"I wrote Novitiate because I saw in a nun’s world a unique and profound way to explore the subject of the way women love. That is what remains at the heart of the story for me. … When I finished this movie, I had a new understanding of religion. I have now a deep sense of admiration and enduring empathy for nuns. Not to mention all the extraordinary sacrifices these women were willing to make, in the name of their love and faith."

"The thing that I learned from Night of the Creeps that went going into Monster Squad and anything else that I had done since then is to have a stopwatch and make sure that however long it takes to play the scene or the take, that we do a couple at different speeds and presumably faster. If you look at the Preston Sturges comedies of the forties or some of the great comic directors of those days or even Howard Hawks, where he had everybody talking over each other very quickly. I think that's a great litmus test because people will almost never blame you if your movie goes too quickly, but they will get their noses out of joint if it's too slow. So the lesson I learned on Creeps was pace. But there's times when it takes its time and that really, really works for it. Making movies is trying to catch lightning in a bottle and it's very, very tricky to do."

"The studios really don’t care very much about the individual artists – they just want to get the shots for the right price. I don’t think that’s an artform that’s based on artistry or passion or vision, or anything, it’s just a commodity, a production line."

"My dream participation would be to make as much money as humanly possible for doing nothing whatsoever."

"CGI is a wonderful tool but I believe it’s mostly mis-used. Or maybe more to the point: OVER-used. I truly believe we have a little chip in our head that subconsciously tells us when something we’re seeing isn’t real… and therein lies the danger of CGI."