I conveniently was not accepted to film school, which I applied to in 1987, and so I decided I would become a filmmaker instead of a student.
— Ira Sachs
As I've gotten less righteous, less pedagogic, I have become more loving of the artificiality, the art form, the imitation of life in film.
Every time you make a film, you create a world. You make decisions about sets and costumes, and you create a universe connected to reality, but not reality itself.
I started making movies in the early '90s, a few years after I discovered 'the cinema' during a three month stay in Paris during which I watched 100s of films.
I've made four films about the destructive nature of relationships, of secrets and lies, and I think I'm no longer interested in that subject - which is a wonderful relief.
I don't think I'd ever start making a film until I had both the intimacy with the subject and the distance to make it live in a certain way.
I have been very influenced by the director Maurice Pialat, who I continue to be in conversation and conflict with and get inspiration from.
All history is defined by shifting modes of reality and time and how things change. That's what I love about cinema. It changes in the moment.
I've been close to two or three couples, gay and straight, who have been together for 45 years.
You can understand why good publicists go on to run distribution companies: because the creativity involved is complex and nuanced.
Seeing the road show of 'A Chorus Line' in 1977 at the Orpheum Theater in downtown Memphis was a life-changing event for me: there were gay people, on the stage, and they all lived in New York.
Everyone wants to belong, and everyone needs to belong in order to make a career on some level.
I think it's interesting: What is the generational effect of the experience of being a gay person in America? For my generation, it was very difficult.
Intimacy is something to be cherished, and intimacy is not something to be afraid of.
I came to N.Y.C. in 1988 and got very involved with Act Up. I also started making movies, including two very gay shorts, 'Vaudeville' and 'Lady.' It was the height of the AIDS epidemic, and New York City was both dying and very alive at the same time.
My films might have been queer - because I was - but they were not gay.
I got into filmmaking in order to tell very personal stories, and in this day and age, the opportunity seems all the more precious.
I remember being a teenager and seeing Seymour Cassel across a crowded room and being incredibly star struck, and not having the courage to say, 'Hello.'
Movies are romantic fantasies.
I always hope that people feel less alone when they see a movie that I make. That some part of the story played out on the big screen will resonate for individuals in the audience in a way that gives them comfort.
Why do people stay in relationships that are tough from almost the very beginning?
As a filmmaker, you realize that places have character based on their history as much as a face does or an actor does.
A lot of what I think I do as a director is try to give everything over to the actor. So I disappear.
I like a film that makes the audience feel like they are in the middle of life as it is moving, and in a way, they are catching up. They are thrown into things.
You can be aware of the passing of time without being nostalgic.
There's a lot of things lost in the Digital Age.
Fighting bitterness can be a full-time job.
By 1988, I was living in New York myself.
I realize I have strength as an artist and professional by embracing my difference instead of what makes me the same.
For gay people, we learned about our lives in secrecy and a lot of fear.
Music Box has proven itself in a few short years to be a cutting edge distributor with a sophisticated understanding of both the market and cinema.
I could not - and I still cannot - see a sustainable career as a filmmaker in which I focus fully on our gay stories.
Without community events like NewFest, I don't think we'd have a queer cinema in America.
As independent filmmakers, we are actually deeply dependent on each other. The Spirit Awards are a public expression of those bonds, the intricate set of relationships and histories that we filmmakers depend on to make our most personal work.
My father moved out to Park City in in the mid-'70s and lived in a Winnebago behind a hippie joint called Utah Coal & Lumber that was one of only two or three restaurants at that time. Park City was a sleepy little mining town, with not a condo in sight.
Suspense films are often based on communication problems, and that affects all of the plot points. It almost gives it kind of a fable feeling.
Secrets make for good drama, and revealing the hidden truths and contradictions of life is, for me, one of the most exciting aspects of making movies.
I don't rehearse with my actors... the first rehearsal is the first time we turn the camera on... Sydney Pollack never rehearsed his actors, and I found out that's allowed... so you film reactions; you don't create them.
What I loved about 'Goodfellas' is that it's a film about bad behavior - but told with great energy and without judgment - but it doesn't actually shy away from the consequences of that behavior in the characters' lives, which I think is similar in 'Keep the Lights On.'
I think there's a fear of difference in American cinema.
One of the biggest things that happens to many people when they have kids is that you suddenly realize that you're not going to last forever. You know there is another generation who are the heroes of their own stories, and that is humbling.
Every film is hard to fund.
I find the stuff that is exciting to me are the films coming out of Taiwan and Iran and France. So I have the feeling I'm not making the films that American distributors want to make.
'How to Survive a Plague' is history-telling at its best. It's a film I'll show my two children, now toddlers, when they are old enough to understand. It's a movie that I cannot forget.
By 15, I was lucky enough to find the theater.
It's easy to make a film, but it's hard to make a career of being a filmmaker.
I grew up thinking there was something called 'independent film,' which I wouldn't necessarily have had access to if there wasn't Sundance.
I grew up in the 1960s in Memphis, and my father was a member of the American Civil Liberties Union. I was born three years before Martin Luther King was killed, and I think that history of civil action was something that I had in my blood.
Being an artist is in part an act of rupture.
You can only begin to share life well when you think well of yourself.
