What I like is finding new angles on genres.
— John Hillcoat
I think it's human nature that if we don't have our own family, we will create a family, because it's human nature, and it's that element of trust and dependency and love and all of those sort of things.
When you're working with an ensemble, I think you really need different energies because you don't have much time with each character to make them feel real. You want strong personalities that are very different.
It's the aspirations that capitalism is promoting as beautiful, positive attributes that are dangerous. All that is in the bedrooms of the poor and in the villages of the Third World, and it's like a cruel carrot that's being waved in front of people's noses. It's a seduction, an unattainable dream.
Everyone has a family, even if they're at war or fallen apart. It's the closest initial bond, and there's a sort of primal element to that. Your primary relationships are formed out of family.
I take very seriously that challenge of trying to do genre films - but elevated genre films.
What was so amazing and inspiring about 'GoodFellas' was that it showed the foot soldiers; the people more at the bottom as opposed to focusing on the godfathers and the guys at the top.
I've learned a lot about getting film sensibilities on digital.
I like to keep a calm set.
The Globes are voted for by anyone in L.A. who's ever written for a foreign newspaper or magazine. That means, like, Romanian cookery writers.
My own personal aesthetic is all to do with real actors and real locations and a kind of almost hyper reality and actuality to things. But the digital world, I explore that through other mediums, with music videos and commercials. Even 'The Road' was a real learning curve for me with digital effects.
'The Road' reminds me of Steinbeck's 'The Grapes of Wrath.'
It's the murkiness of humanity that I find endlessly fascinating.
Social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter - I steer away from them. They're alienating us socially as well as bringing us together.
I like to do commercials that are more than just flogging a product. It needs to have something to say. It's always an opportunity for a director to say something substantial and interesting.
I always try and find a place for Guy Pearce. The great thing about him is he's so versatile, and I wouldn't work with an actor that much if it weren't for the fact that he had so much versatility.
Any way you want to slice it, the thing about the apocalypse is, since the beginning of time, it's the projection of mankind's worst fear. The day that, as a race, our number is up.
What irritates me about sci-fi is that it got hijacked by video games and also became so high-concept it was all about ideas and gadgets and technology and nothing about the human experience.
I have always thought of films as stories for the world.
I am very keen to do a film that's female-led.
It's great to make strong, powerful films, but in terms of people wanting to finance them, it's also very difficult.
In Australia in the '70s, there was a real embrace of different genres. And then George Miller did 'Mad Max' by the end of the '70s, the beginning of the '80s. And it was really thriving.
I think what actors have to do, what performers have to do to emotionally get to that place and have a camera and have your face 20 feet high on a screen, is such an incredible thing.
What's amazing about 'White Heat' is that, even for its time, it's very truthful in the way it deals with violence.
The one that I've always wanted - and I have Scott Rudin in my way blocking it - is 'Blood Meridian,' which Cormac McCarthy has offered to adapt into a screenplay.
Basically, I frittered away the Nineties making pop videos and being pretty self-indulgent.
The last time I played video games was 'Space Invaders.'
I don't really play games and don't know much about them, but my son certainly does.
Even on a large ensemble where their parts are relatively small - because having ten main characters obviously affects their screen time - the thing that attracts great actors is when there is that challenge to get some reality into something.
I like the realism of anti-heroes. It's a healthy thing. I think heroes can be very unhealthy at times because it doesn't connect you to reality.
I have very mixed feelings about big corporations. Oftentimes, they're more troublesome than not.
It's such an intense thing to make a film.
I love the sci-fi movies where it's from the point of view of humans in that situation... When it becomes too clever in its ideas, the cyber-punk, high-tech thing, it becomes more about something else.
I think the environment is the biggest threat mankind has ever faced.
I kept hearing about this incredible guy called Tom Hardy. I started watching his work, and I was awestruck - he was amazing.
I'm actually a humanist, believe it or not, and I believe even when people are corrupted, even when they've gone to the dark side, they are still human beings.
There are so many tricks and so much eye candy in cinema. What I love about the classicism of genre is that there's a discipline. I think it's a healthy thing to resist all that candy.
Unfortunately, I've seen violence, and I think, in films, it is the dramatic extremity of it.
I love strong women.
Comedy, I'm still in awe of. I think you need a comic genius somewhere in the mix. It's got to be the actor or someone. But the 'comic genius' actors are the darkest people on the planet - and that kind of scares me!
Certain films, when shot digitally, the detail is like CG: you can't feel the sweat. I feel like digital is alienating. There's something superficial to digital compared to the richness of film.
I like restraint. Even with actors, restraint is something that I work on the most.
It's not awards per se that bother me; it's entirely to do with the impetus they give for marketing a film.
I personally found 'Avatar' - the blue people, to me, looked like painted art from the seventies. It didn't have the realism as, say, the robotic machines.
I love those sorts of stories where you actually see the consequences of what violence does physically to people as well as psychologically.
I consider myself a humanist. Even if I do very dark worlds, I try to make those characters real humans as opposed to just cartoons.
When you have a major movie star, and then they're surrounded by local extras, it takes me out or makes me more conscious of what's going on, as opposed to losing myself in the movie.
I'm an Australian. And I'm speaking generally here, but Australians in general aren't patriotic or nationalistic. Our country was built by immigrants. So, by my experience, I've seen the way immigration has transformed nations. They are the key people who quite literally build civilizations, be it culturally or musically.
I love 'Alien' and 'Blade Runner' and '2001.'
I've realized I've become a bit reactive to each film I do. After 'The Road,' I was desperate to do something that had color and warmth to it and a stronger sense of community.
