When my son was 8 months old, he had a febrile seizure. You know, if you're in the first year - my wife and I refer to it as the 'darkness.' You're just underwater.
— Jeff Nichols
A lot of independent filmmakers are really catty.
'Shotgun Stories' and 'Take Shelter'... I was willing to make those with no money and no time. With 'Mud,' I just wanted to protect it until I could have the resources. It's a real tricky movie.
I really don't care about plot. I really, really don't.
I care about narrative structure; I care about how stories unfold.
You have actors you've worked with previously, and you have actors you haven't worked with that you've seen in things where you know they can work in these parts. And then there are actors who blow you away, who surprise you.
Your reaction when you lose control in a situation is to try and hang on tighter.
Endings don't have anything to do with what your movie is about. Now, there is an emotional climax, there's an emotional resolution that is 100 percent important. If I get that wrong, get your money back.
As a storyteller, you have to have something to say. You have to look at the world, think about it in relationship to yourself, and say, 'I think this is a pattern,' or 'I think this is the way fatherhood works,' or 'I think this is the way first love feels.' The danger in that is, that's when you open yourself up to real critique.
My stated goal as a filmmaker is to feel something. Is to have a palpable emotion in my life, carry it through the gauntlet of the filmmaking process and try and have it land for an audience at some point during the viewing experience. That to me is successful filmmaking.
Actors are real. It's a real skill, and it exists, and talent really exists.
My characters aren't chess pieces. I don't move them around some big board. I actually care about these fictitious people.
If you want someone to show up and execute your script for you, seriously, there are a lot of great people out there. Don't call me.
I have a very linear mind.
I think when you're talking about marriage equality and race, people very quickly start to get into their political corners: their ideology comes to the forefront, and they get into this platform argument that they're used to making, which really doesn't have anything to do with the day-to-day basics of what is being talked about.
I never wanted to make movies just for me. I want to make movies that people watch.
I think too often in films, people think endings are a summation of plot, and I don't like that. Because once you know where you're going as an audience member, then it's like a video game. You're just waiting for them to get through the levels and beat the bad guy. And I just think that's boring.
I love 'Lawrence of Arabia,' big sweeping films. I want my films to feel that way, to be on a big canvas.
Nature is the purest thing we can touch and observe. It can be the most beautiful and also the most devastating.
I really don't know how to tell you what it feels like to be a parent.
I think I could probably make $5 to $10m movies for a very long time and live a perfectly good life doing it. I'd probably get paid as well as a surgeon, which is pretty damn remarkable for a guy who went to film school.
We've gotten to a point where it costs so much money to make a movie that directors and filmmakers feel they have to make sure that everybody gets it. And that's an unfortunate development, I think, in a lot of narratives floating around in the film industry.
I haven't seen 'Room' yet. People tell me 'Room' is such an amazing film, but ever since I had a kid, I just can't. I can't do it. It's not fun. It's not a place I want to be.
My first job in the film business was working as a production assistant, and then a production manager on a documentary about Townes Van Zandt.
What Richard and Mildred Loving did was, by their nature, not by any calculus, they separated themselves from the political conversation. They did not have an agenda. They did not want to be martyrs. They did not want to be symbols of a movement.
I am not going to approve the home-screening format for my film just carte blanche in lieu of a theatrical screening when I cannot trust that it will ever be seen in the format that it's intended to be.
I wrote 'Mud' for Matthew McConaughey and had never met him.
I think plot is very overrated. Plot is obviously necessary, but what I really care about is emotionally affecting the audience. Having a thought myself and then an emotional experience myself, somehow transferring that to the audience.
I think we're so advanced when it comes to watching narrative material. I mean, it's all we do is consume content all day long. So when a character walks onscreen, you immediately start making connections for that character: Is that a good guy? Is that a bad guy?
A lot of people have a belief system that is strictly based on religious dogma.
I'll say this: I think from a directing standpoint, 'Loving' is my most accomplished film. Strictly from a technical, directing point of view.
There's one right place to put the camera. I'm a big believer in that. You'd think you could put it anywhere. Nope.
There's a reason why I use film. It's because it's the best representation of how our eyes work. I really believe that. I think it's better than digital.
The real cost is always more than just the money you shell out.
Whenever I write, I try and approach my stories from some kind of universal theme or idea or emotion.
The more we try to control our kids and create who they are and where they're going, the more that will fall apart. That's a dangerous thing. So you need to actually manage the fear and figure out who your kids are. Who do they want to be and how can you help shape that, but not control it.
There's a rhythm and a cadence in a scene, and when an actor understands without any real direction from you, then that's a very valuable gift. And some people get it, and some people don't.
The funny thing about 'Take Shelter' is that a lot of people talk about how it was allegory for the economy and things that were to happen. And that was so on the nose in the movie for me. I was like, 'That's obvious.' It's the other stuff about marriage and commitment and those other things that I spent the most time thinking about.
In terms of my personal spirituality and everything else, it's ever-evolving. I have a desire to want more out of the universe. But the older I get, the further I get from any specifics about that.
I'm not as worried about the process of writing, simply because I think I've got that one down, you know? I think I know what brings specificity to these ideas, what brings specificity to the genre elements, or anything else, and it's personal emotions.
If I can drive down the road in my car and listen to XM satellite, and when a song gets beamed into my car, it can tell me who wrote the song and what the damn lyrics are, why, when you broadcast a digital signal of a film, can't it speak to your television to set up a list of settings to show the film in the way that it was meant to be shown?
I've only seen one snake out in the wilderness, not behind glass, and I froze. I literally couldn't move. So to say I have a fear of snakes would be true.
'Mud' was a depository for a little more nostalgia and just a different kind of feeling, a different kind of mood. Something that's not so dark. Something that does actually have a happy ending and is a little more hopeful.
I think the way you make a movie dictates the movie that you make.
Definitely when you give a script to an actor, it's like dropping a capsule in water and the fizzing starts. That's when the thing starts to live and breathe.
I thought 'Mud' would be such an easy film for people to understand.
I grew up in Arkansas, and I went to Little Rock Central High, which was the site of a desegregation crisis in '57. I graduated in '97.
I can talk to execs very clearly, very plainly. I don't get nervous in front of them anymore.
