I like titles that are a little difficult, because it's kind of counterintuitive.
— Charlie Kaufman
I want to try it to see what it's like and see what my stuff looks like when I take it from inception to completion.
I think generally I'm kind of interested in subjective experience, what goes on inside someone's head, that being all they really know of the world.
As a writer, or as a filmmaker, you have to present yourself, and part of what yourself is is what you're interested in, or what you think is funny, or what you think is sad, or what you think is horrible.
I have ideas written down some places, but usually I can't find them. I'm not very organized.
There's no way to approach anything in an objective way. We're completely subjective; our view of the world is completely controlled by who we are as human beings, as men or women, by our age, our history, our profession, by the state of the world.
The only honest and generous thing for me to do is to give people myself. That's all I've got as an artist, so I want to do that in an unflinching way.
I don't write genre stuff in any form. I'm not interested in it. I always try to do the opposite of that.
I have a personality that tends to be somewhat compulsive, and I do tend to think in a circular way. I dwell on the same things over and over and I try to figure out different ways of looking at the same issue.
I'm old enough, by a long shot, to remember going to the library and spending days researching. If I was looking for a line from a poem or something else I needed, that would be the trip I would have to take.
Everything I've written is personal - it's the only way I know how to write.
There's theater in life, obviously, and there's life in theater.
I actually think I'm probably more interested in structure than most people who write screenplays, because I think about it.
I feel like I want to keep moving toward idiosyncracy. Personal, personal, personal.
My time on the set is the least of my involvement. Most of my time is in pre-production and post-production.
I like actors - I used to be one.
I'm not into extreme sports or something. I just live a quiet life.
We have the script, we have the actors, and we're trying to figure out what this is, and you don't know what it is. You have to be open to what it's going to become rather than have this thing that you're trying to get to, which is boring.
I think you just assume that your memory is just sort of a video playback of your experience, but it's nothing like that at all. It's a complete refabrication of an event and a lot of it is made up, because you're filling in spaces.
I'm trying to tell a story and do it truthfully.
I'm interested in trying to explore what I think is the truth at a given time in my life, and part of the process of being honest is - in my mind - talking about the idea that you're watching a movie. You're sitting here watching a movie. And I like that. It appeals to me intellectually, and also in a way I can't even explain.
I can talk endlessly about characters, or why someone did this or that, and what that dynamic and interaction is. I really love it, and I think that actors really respond positively to the fact that I like to talk about that stuff, because I'm not sure that all directors do.
We try to organize the world, which isn't organized the way our brains want to organize it. We tell stories about the people in our lives, we project ideas onto them. We project relationships with people, we make our lives into stories. I don't think we can avoid doing that.
I think that people have expectations of themselves and other people that are based on these fictions that are presented to them as the way human life and relationships could be, in some sort of weird, ideal world, but they never are. So you're constantly being shown this garbage and you can't get there.
I don't think screenwriting is therapeutic. It's actually really, really hard for me. It's not an enjoyable process.
In a lot of movies, especially big studio ones, they're not constructed in any other way than to get people to like them and then tell their friends. It's a product.
I graduated from college in 1980.
I do like escapism. I like going to the movies on a Friday night and seeing something fun.
If you create something that is asking for people to respond as they're going to respond, you have to allow them to respond as they're going to respond. Some of the people are going to be uninterested and some people are going to be mad for some reason, which is their business. That's just the way the world is.
There's this inherent screenplay structure that everyone seems to be stuck on, this three-act thing. It doesn't really interest me. To me, it's kind of like saying, 'Well, when you do a painting, you always need to have sky here, the person here and the ground here.' Well, you don't.
Before you start production, you have characters you have created without actors in mind, then all of a sudden you've got actors. They bring an enormous amount in creating these characters, and creating the dynamics between the characters that you've written.
When I'm writing, I'm trying to immerse myself in the chaos of an emotional experience, rather than separate myself from it and look back at it from a distance with clarity and tell it as a story. Because that's how life is lived, you know?
Directing is a more pragmatic experience, where you have to deal with the restrictions of time and money that force you to make certain decisions you don't have to make when you're writing.
Sometimes I don't like the books that I'm reading.
The way I write is very much without kind of a goal. I have something I'm interested in and then I decide I'm going to explore it. I don't know where the characters are going to go, I don't know what the movie is going to do or what the screenplay is going to do. For me, that's the way to keep it alive.
I wanted to deal with someone's idea of their relationship.
I do have, at different times, a certain kind of self-consciousness in the world, an insecurity.
I do throw out a lot of ideas, and I forget completely about them.
I've had to deal, a lot, with my own sense of intimidation at meeting famous people - especially actors, but really any famous people.
It occurred to me that every work of art is a synecdoche, there's no way around it. Every creative work that someone does can only represent an aspect of the whole of something. I can't think of an exception to that.
I don't subscribe to anything. I sit there and I try to think about what seems honest to me.
I think if I've worked anything through with screenwriting it's that I'm not going to be able to work anything through.
I've kind of come to the conclusion that what passes for realism in movies has nothing to do with reality and that my stuff is more realistic than that.
I studied acting at Boston University. I was in the theater department there. Somewhere in there I decided that wasn't what I was going to do and I went to the B.F.A. film program at N.Y.U.
I think if something resonates, even if it's surreal, it's because it is relatable and I think that that's a core issue for me.
I have a lot of health anxiety.
I tend to not only read reviews, but also every little stupid thing online. It's a very bad idea, and there's a lot of angry people in the world. And it's weird to absorb all that weirdness.
I'm in my mind a lot. I live there.
As a kid, I had a background in theater.
I think I've had pretty good experiences for the most part with the people who have directed my screenplays.
