When people think fashion is just the surface of things, I disagree very politely.
— Luca Guadagnino
I'm incredibly inspired by the goofy edginess of teenagers and young people.
I think a script is great when it starts with the structure and works with the structure without falling into the typical three-act system in which the audience is ahead of the movie. I hate that, but that is like 99% of what I read.
In 1993, my first documentary was about the civil war in Algeria. That was in French and in Arabic. Another short film I did was silent. What I'm trying to say is that, yes, I'm Italian, and yes, I make films with Italian money, but personally, I've always been invested in the broader world of film-making.
The concept of muse is alien to me. To speak of a muse implies there is a couple in which one person is the objectified passive element - there to help the creative, active, often male part of the duo to create. A muse is very passive. Who wants a muse? I don't want a muse.
My secret desire is to be an interior designer. I'd love to make houses for rich clients who can afford to do things right.
The concept of making a movie in which the director dictates is kind of exotic - and absolutely not truthful. Directing means allowing a great deal of collaboration and listening and having the ability to change your mind.
I am a film director, and I work with a visual language, with a visual medium. And I try to make virtue of the use of this visual medium. And I try to make sure what I do speaks the language of cinema.
I am more interested in revolutionary beauty than in the great beauty, to be honest. Italian cinema is now mostly a bureau for tourism. We have given up that revolution of the contemporary.
Making movies is about control. You need to control your narcissism in the first place, and you need to be disciplined enough to understand the reason for the film. You need to follow the agenda of the film, not a personal agenda or that of the studio. Or, worst of all, of the actors.
As a director, what matters is how you penetrate the soul of the person in front of the camera and let the actor blur the boundaries between the character and the person themselves. In order to achieve that, I try to make people feel at ease, to be mindless of problems and be skinless and give everything to the camera.
I don't like post-modernism. It's cynical, and takes no discipline - you just copy. It doesn't allow a film to be open to reality.
I come from a petit bourgeois family, and I've always been drawn to artists and people who choose their own way of life instead of being chosen by the lives that people want for them.
I need to have a great deal of control and the ability to share my control with my collaborators and grant them the freedom and the quality of work I think these people deserve. If I don't have those elements, I walk away.
I grew up with a concept of cinema as a directorial thing, meaning the director is allowed to sail the ship. Not a dictatorial thing.
If you desire something, you don't have it. It is more interesting than enjoyment, because enjoyment erases the mysteries and the vision of desire. Desire opens up possibilities but never achieves anything, whereas enjoyment is just the brutal achievement of something - and after that, it's done.
Spare functional furniture, in my opinion, is the genius of 20th-century design.
I hate the concept of beauty for the sake of it. It is overrated.
The point is that filmmaking is a collaborative effort; it isn't about imposing your vision on other people. It's about the talking, you know?
I think we shouldn't be shy of thinking that we can interpret text like a movie again, depending on the point of view and what we do with it more than anything else. Of course a lot of remakes of important films, particularly of horror films, they suck.
My father is a teacher; my mother was a telecom employee. I come from Palermo; I was raised in Ethiopia. I am homosexual. I didn't go to film school.
I love to tell stories, but the making is less comfortable. I like to be private, and being in the middle of a film crew with the least amount of privacy is the discomfort of shooting a movie. For me, the editing is the great moment when I can bring back ideas and realize the movie for the last time before I hand it to the audience.
I only cast the actors and actresses I fall in love with - truly having an emotion for them, an anticipation and enthusiasm when seeing them - and I believe that my emotional confidence in them blends into chemistry. It's always been like that, and I hope I won't be wrong in the future.
I am a Hitchcockian - I still believe that 'Psycho' sets the standard for mother/son relations.
I think you should never be forced to be nice as an artist. An artist has to be uncomfortable in a way. Narcissistic and uncomfortable.
Moviemaking is a dirty, tiring affair. The joy comes from the possibility to be free on set and really let loose.
I have a number of projects that I've been dreaming of making ever since I was a child. But I am also very open to the chances of life and the chances of my profession.
I'm interested in form, in the shape of things. And in commitment to the degree of never letting go the quest for the meaning of things. That can come off as beauty and style, but that's not where I start from.
You know when they say you need to put people who go well together? I much prefer to put people who fight at the table. Then you have some sort of sparkle at the dinner!
I think that making a movie is not just making the movie - it is also about having thoughtful ideas and embracing all the aspects of its launch.
When you have great performers and have set your movie in the right direction, it's a beautiful privilege to let the camera watch the action unfold without spoken words.
I don't much like post-modernism, because post-modernist has become the basket in which every mediocre person can shuffle things and pretend to do something significant, and we could also mention who use post-modernism in this way - maybe we shouldn't.
Everything that goes outside the rules of Italian cinema has always been cursed.
I'm a very eclectic person, and I enjoy multiple tastes; I'm like a bee who jumps from flower to flower. Before I die, I have to make a war movie, a Western, and a movie like Mike Nichols, because I love him.
I'm one of those directors who read reviews, even if they're bad, because I started as a film critic as a cinema student. I indulge in the art of criticism in general.
I personally don't think that blood ties should be something that signifies so much more than anything else. I understand perfectly when somebody leaves their family for good.
