Film Directors From The United States

"I think the key to a great romcom is to not fight against the genre,” she explains. “The trend more recently has been to apologise, or be snarky, so it’s an anti-romcom.” Out comes that wide smile. “Just lean in and embrace the fact it’s a love story and it’s funny and it’s light. It can still be uber-smart and deal with zeitgeist issues."

"I just happen to be someone who happens to like the fear to be created in my mind. That’s why I like the more minimalistic approach. It’s just a taste thing. I’m not as into the blood and guts."

"A script is only the beginning of the process. But with books, what you write is exactly what people read. So as a writer, that's very satisfying."

"I rarely take the characteristics of someone I know and make them a complete fictional character, except maybe with truly minor characters who only play a small role. All of my characters are more like the Frankenstein monster, having been stitched together using multiple real people. The classic advice to any writer is "write what you know". So in order to create believable characters, you have to write about people you know."

"There was no interference, nothing on a creative level, you have the idea, you go for it. And that's what it was like with all the shows made back then, it was that attitude that really created Nickelodeon and made the show as good as it was."

"Any screenwriter will tell you that as satisfying and wonderful a career as that is, outside of the people you work with, nobody actually reads what you write. Your writing goes through a process, touched by multiple dozens of people, until it becomes a finished piece of film. As an example on a very simple level, you may write a line of dialog that you absolutely love, but an actor had to speak that line, and music might be there to underscore the line, and the line might be read in a situation where a dozen other things are happening simultaneously. It's all good and the way it is supposed to work, but the overall experience becomes about so much more than the line itself. Writing a book is much more pure than that, and I wanted to experience it."

"The thing is, kids love scary stories. They love dramatic stories. They love that kind of stuff. It’s one of the reasons why I write books now. I’m able to write the kind of stuff I like, whereas in TV I can’t do that anymore."

"The job of a director on the set to a large degree is to keep everybody’s moral up, he’s one of the very few people on the set who doesn’t have anything to do, because he’s overseeing it. He’s not shooting it, he’s not editing it, so a director needs to make sure that the cast and crew can do the best possible job. Sometimes I see films where the actors walk through it almost mechanically, and then there are other movies where every actor, top to bottom, seems to be doing a really great job. Then you know that there’s a chemistry on the set created by the director, an environment that helps them to do their work."

"I don't believe you could be narrow culturally or intellectually when you're creating cartoons. If you look at the old classics from the '40s, from anybody, it's loaded with culture, and references to things that people have experienced, to music and sound effects to even writing gags, social commentary, parody. Those were people that are very, very aware. They didn't put out gags superficially."

"Maybe there are two types of people in the world: those who favor humans over ideology, and those who favor ideology over humans. I prefer humans to ideology, but right now the ideologues are winning, and they're creating a stage for artificial high dramas, where everyone is either a magnificent hero or a sickening villain."

"I suppose it's no surprise that we feel the need to dehumanize the people we hurt—before, during, or after the hurting occurs. But it always comes as a surprise. In psychology it's known as cognitive dissonance. It's the idea that it feels stressful and painful for us to hold two contradictory ideas at the same time (like the idea that we're kind people and the idea that we've just destroyed someone). And so to ease the pain we create illusory ways to justify our contradictory behavior."

"We’ve been doing this for awhile, when you’ve been doing this a long time, you cross your fingers and hope for the best, but you never know. To find an audience that’s passionate, that’s as good as it gets."

"The creative community has a lot more ideas than the executive community feels comfortable with."

"The higher-ups that I’m negotiating with are always men, I think if you asked any of them, they’re really liberal guys and they’d be like, ‘We wish there were more female directors.’ But whenever they have this large amount of money and they are about to invest it in something and they need to pick somebody to be at the helm for it and represent them, they look for somebody that’s the most like them. Unconsciously! They’re like, ‘I wish there were more female directors, but for this movie [made with] my money, I’m going to pick the guy that’s like me.’"

"It is very difficult to edit something that I direct. It’s having to remake decisions that I’ve already made on set and now have to undo or reimagine. I always warn Directors sitting down with me to edit not to watch the film and footage too much. The ability to have fresh eyes and be able to watch the movie as a viewer is the most valuable tool a director has."

"When you look at three hundred people, you’ll find some that just fit. It’s like a bell rings, “They’re perfect. That’s them!” Then once that happens, eighty-percent of communicating the world to them is achieved. They are now communicating that world to me. We’re now creating it together. I’m a very collaborative director. I bring them into the world by being excited. I try to give that to them and give them a tremendous amount of leeway to let them build up their characters."

"Movies are going to go away eventually. I just want to make sure that, when they do, they turn into something better."

"My biggest influence was my father, Rolf Forsberg, who was a successful independent filmmaker in the '60s, '70s, and '80s, doing mostly shorts, religious films, and eco-green-movies before they were cool. My friends and I would watch his films over and over again when they slept at my house. I got my first super 8mm camera when I was nine and I’ve been making movies ever since."

"I try not to wink at the audience too much or laugh at my own satire. Good B-movie camp has to be played deadly serious. Let the audience do the chuckling."

"I think everyone will tell you that we live in a time that technology has given everyone the ability to make their own things and create exposure through the internet and social media. Those things weren’t available when I was starting out. So, without question, you should take advantage of those things. What everyone neglects to mention is the importance of personal growth and development. So much of what you create is shaped by your background and the things that shaped you. The better you understand your background, the sharper your voice will become."

"If you’re a parent, you want to teach your kids to be kind, you want to teach them to care about other people and you want to teach them not to discriminate for no reason."

"We try to give a voice to not just the writers or our directors, but even the story artists. We make it in a way that they also get to be participants in the writing and in the brainstorming so that they can put their contributions in. It becomes this amazing hive mind of, how can we make this as authentic of a feeling and experience as possible? I do think a lot of that is just getting the right team that gets along and just cares enough about the show or the movie. That even extends to the art team and the production. It really makes a difference when they care about what’s being said and what the message is."

"I’m definitely still wild at heart. But I’ve struck bio-gravity."

"If men are honest, everything they do and everywhere they go is for a chance to see women."

"Never rub another man's rhubarb."

"Our story is not really ours until we tell it, until it belongs to others too."

"Making a documentary is like having a dream. You can’t really anticipate what it will be. You have to constantly yield to whatever is manifested before you, to have the courage for whatever is revealed to you. Whatever truth confesses itself, even if it’s not what you anticipated. To just be a mirror. To invite in whatever arrives. To reflect it as loyally."

"(William) Burroughs was all about the future. Was all about liberation through the dismantling of presiding orders. He was a big influence on punk culture and punk music (and me) for that reason."

"Don’t hunt for what to photograph. Let images find you. You wander your desert until worthy mirage appears. Wait until that worthy shot comes. And then try to capture it."

"Photography is a hunt. But one that ends in the immortality of the prey, rather than the prey’s death."

"Patience is the only honest muse. In writing, in painting, and especially in photography."

"Film photography just makes such an ally of chance, and chance is essential to any valid art, to the poetic…to life, to the spiritual."

"Collective subversion is conformity. The only true revolution is the singular one."

"Any art should be advertising for one's soul."

"Love is at essence ritual of tandem fate, of harmonized experience. It’s a holy thing, that merging of consciousness. Our minds become authored by so many of the same events, colored by so much mutual memory."

"Media technology will place a barrier before us. The barrier of a mirror. It is too loyal to history and the history it preserves will become constantly present. No longer a cultural past merely documented, but a past alive. Eternal. So that it is no longer past, but a continuous present that cycles and repeats endlessly, disallowing the possibility of a future. Static memory. Memory uninterrupted by the present."

"Love is never more than a faith, and that’s why it’s so exciting."

"All lovers are runaways, are fugitives. Inheriting the entire world on that journey. Escaping to one another."

"This is not cinema harnessing life; this is life harnessing cinema. Not a film. An attempt at a film. The imperfect effort is ever present, mischievously decorating every frame. Reminding us: one never actually makes a film—one merely attempts to make a film. Reminding us: one never actually lives—one attempts to live."

"There is no artistic worth in compromise, in a pair, in collaboration, in obedient unity. These are all impossible terms. Action must come from the individual. The group (even if just a population of two) is only capable of reaction."

"Nostalgia is an illness. A symptom of the dying, of those who have more life behind them than before them."

"(Lydia) Lunch and a lot of the no wave musicians were imbued with the wisdom—and neuroses—of genuine trauma. There's the divine madness in them. When Suicide's Alan Vega sneered, you might have actually found yourself bloodied shortly thereafter. You sure as hell wouldn't reach for your iPhone to Instagram and tag his #antics. You'd feel a little intruded upon, which is precisely how all the best art should make you feel."

"Right now, there are more people on Facebook than there were on the planet 200 years ago. Humanity’s greatest desire is to belong and connect, and now, we see each other. We hear each other. We share what we love. And this connection is changing the way the world works."

"After a treacherous journey we finally arrived in Sudan, on top of the Nuba Mountains, and with it came a shocking 130° degree [fahrenheit, 54° celsius] heat — and right from the start, we could tell, this was not the adventure we had expected. There wasn't much to do."

"When [Powerpuff Girls] was tested, everyone hated it. There were 11-year-old boys telling me I should be fired and it was the worst cartoon they've ever seen in their life."

"When I was a kid I spent a lot of time playing with the artisticly rooted pieces of junk that George was selling me. My wife Lauren did the same the only difference was her junk was pink and had combable hair. Either way these toys were far from junk, in fact they were our lives. Everyday we would make up characters, worlds, and adventures for them. Lauren's My Little Pony world was no less valid than My Little Star Wars world.So imagine little Lauren's surprise when she heard there was going to be a cartoon of her favorite toy! Imagine her dissapointment when the cartoon didn't live up to the world she had created in her head. Maybe she wouldn't have been so upset if she realized that cartoon was only bad because it was produced by a bunch of dudes who couldn't believe they were working on My Little Pony, uggggh. Imagine if they let HER make it, she knows why girls like Pony, she knows what will make it fun and cool.Now imagine 30 years later in some crazy cosmic coincidence she actually does get a get a chance to finally bring that world she's had in her head since she was a little kid to life! Maybe just maybe if she can traverse the waters of notes, schedules, and executives she can finally inject a little a artistic integrity and creative vision into it and make a MLP that girls will actually really like.Heck I even like it now and I hated that lame Pony junk, it wasn't cool like my Star Wars junk."

"What a lot of people have found out about Powerpuff Girls is initially they just think it's this little girl thing that's lame like My Little Pony or whatever. Then they watch it and they’re like "Wait a minute, this is really funny, and this is really good, and it's actually, you know, entertaining.""

"The main inspirations for Powerpuff for me were the '66 Adam West Batman show, and Underdog."

"When I first did my first short for Powerpuff Girls, and we focus-tested it, I'm sure people have heard this story, we showed it to a group of 11-year-old boys, and they said "this is the worst cartoon that has been ever made and whoever made it should be fired." I'm sitting in the room with all the executives watching these 11-year-old boys destroy the show, and... I was like, I went back to the studio and I started redesigning the characters and I gave 'em fingers and I made them more accessible, and I was like "they didn't get it, they didn't get it..." [...] I took that criticism and went, "what did I do wrong? What wasn't I communicating? How I was I not telling this idea clearly?" And what I realized I was doing, is I had been making it in my head for so long, I made an episode that was like a third season, middle-of-the-season episode. And I'm like, "No, you gotta go back to the very beginning of the idea" [...] and just kind of step the audience through the idea and introduce them. Even though it seems like old hat to you, and you're like "well that's boring", but that's what the audience wants. Tell them a story. Who are they, these characters? Why should I like them? Don't be so ironic or high-concept-y."

"A lot of people come up with these really elaborate concepts, and they get into the weeds of the concepts and how the story's gonna be. That's not what executives wanna see. They wanna see characters that they can engage with, and, also it sounds a little cliche, but the so-called "elevator pitch" or seven words, "try to describe your show in seven words", is a really good exercise. I found it just... work through, y'know, what your idea is about. That elevator pitch is basically "I've got a few seconds to tell somebody my idea, how would I say it?""