New York just feels real to me, and not everyone is in the movie business.
— Peter Hedges
Let the story lead you. If the story needs to be dark, let it go dark. If it's a sweet, good-for-the-world story, that's what it is.
So much of life's dramas, good and bad, play out against family and so it's really inspiring for any number of stories in all the fields I write in.
There are very few topics where I can imagine that you might not find humor. And I was stunned at how much weird and dark humor there was when my mom died.
I play this game with my son called Never Seen. We try to see new things every day, and we do. I don't take that for granted.
I grew up going to funerals and visiting people in nursing homes. I'm not as afraid of dealing with the dying as maybe some other people may be.
The job in every re-write is to make it harder for your characters to get the thing that they need.
I used to find limitations frustrating, but I find them enormously liberating.
And for better or worse, a story like 'Pieces of April' is the kind of story I'm supposed to tell. The kind of story that makes you laugh as much as possible but also breaks your heart.
A novel is challenging, because you have more story than you need and you have to select and narrow.
Pieces of April' was going to be a 3 to 7 million dollar film and we had three entities, two studios, and one wealthy man and they all backed out. It was quite a blow.
The most autobiographical thing I've ever written is my second novel, called 'An Ocean in Iowa.' That is pretty close to my childhood.
The kinds of movies I make are not easy to get made.
I make sure when I direct that it's a very joy-based set that hopefully is filled with a lot of respect.
Ultimately what I try to do is work on stories I love with people I admire, and sometimes they get made and sometimes they don't.
Black people are more likely to be incarcerated than white people. That's just a fact and it's regrettable and it's got to change.
So, yes, I wrote a script called 'Ben Is Back' that I got to make with a bunch of remarkable artists and craftspeople.
You could cast nearly any movie in Brooklyn, and now you can film in Brooklyn - for you have studios.
I took a look at my own life and realized that I was overinvesting in my kids. I realized that I had to get out of the way and let them be who they wanted to be, not what I wanted them to be.
Family is paramount to me in my life, and my own comes first above everything, and that's something universal that people can relate to.
I feel cool when I say I live in Brooklyn.
I've always had an acute sense of mortality, maybe because my father's a minister.
I wouldn't say I'm a religious person, but I am definitely inclined toward asking the big questions.
Is my job as a child, even as an adult, is my job to heal the wounds of my parents' childhoods?
The greatest love I believe... the greatest love I have is for my children, but I think the greatest love probably universally is a mother's love for a child.
I completely hold on to the idea that people are eager if not desperate to be told a good story.
When you have an intimate encounter with mortality as my family and I did with my mom's death, I took a long look at my life and I asked myself what was the one thing that I hadn't done that I had really wanted to do. And it was to write and direct a film.
When I was a young lad just out of college at the North Carolina School of the Arts, I directed several plays that I wrote. It was essential theater, meaning we had no money, so our set may be six stools and two chairs and eight cream pies.
I think the best dramas are as funny as possible and the best comedies have, underneath them, real substance.
I want to make a series of films of contemporary America that feel urgent and deal with sometimes-topical matters, but hopefully in a universal way.
If there's a photo of a roomful of kids I'm the one with the biggest smile or my hand over my face.
There's no reason that a writer, if they have some discipline and curiosities and passion, can't be vital for a long, long time.
I try, in my films, to normalize things that maybe 20 or 30 years ago a film would have been about. 'Guess Who's Coming to Dinner' needed its own film, but now blended families you see all the time.
Everything good in my life can be traced back to my mother's sobriety. She showed me that broken people can - with the help of others - turn themselves around.
I can go years without going to Los Angeles, but I think my living in Brooklyn is critical to my continuing to have a fairly happy life in the film industry.
It's not easy to be a good or wise parent. You do the best you can.
Maudlin scenes where people pour their heart out to one another? I don't want to see it.
When I go home to Iowa, people assume I live in this very big anonymous place where no one knows each other or wants to. Truth is, I know my neighbors better in Brooklyn than I ever did in Iowa.
I grew up going to church every Sunday and my mother was a drug and alcohol counselor, so both of my parents' lives have been about helping people at times of crisis.
I love films that take place over a short period of time, and I feel that those films are in our cinematic DNA.
I'm interested in stories that help me, people navigate in this broken world.
I once heard a story, it's probably apocryphal, but I love the notion. That a car had flipped over and the baby was trapped underneath the car and the mother was thrown from the car. Then the mother lifted up the car to pull her child to safety. And I believe that my own strength comes from whom and what I love.
When I did 'Gilbert Grape,' Lasse Hallstrom let me be on the set with him and in the editing room and in the casting sessions and so on. And so I got a firsthand, rather intimate, high-pressure look at how to make a film.
Something happened to me when I wrote female characters in my early plays; it was a real liberation.
I wanted to direct long before I'd even written a screenplay.
I never try to think I have the answer to what people should do or not do.
Well, because my films are really about how people interact with each other, and the complexity, and the nuance, and the surprise of those moments I try to create a safe enough space that allows the actors to operate from their own instincts. My direction is more suggestions, prompts or questions.
Writing a really good screenplay is not easy. It can be a very punishing form.
One of the great kicks of having a movie made is that you envision this world.
There was a part of me that wanted to take my place next to, you know, Debra Granik. She's such a hero for me.
