Every college player thinks they're on their way. But, delusions aside, I might have toiled in the minor leagues for a bit.
— Richard Linklater
Maybe part of being a dad means that the slightest little thing will make me tear up.
Every stage of filmmaking's important while you're doing it, so I spend most of my time figuring out how to tell the story. I have all these stories and ideas, but it's how to tell the story.
I remember daydreaming out in the outfield: I wish I had more time. I want to read 'The Brothers Karamazov.'
I always say I'll never make a film in Austin in summer, but I always end up here.
When I saw 'subUrbia' on stage, I started having those feelings inside me. I saw it as a film, and I felt I knew the characters, or I was the characters. It really dredged up all this stuff in me that never went away.
For a lot of us, awareness is merely realizing the extent to which we've been lied to all our lives. You start educating yourself. You become motivated; you follow your muse where it takes you. And you see the world in a different way. You start making decisions based on what you feel is right.
I remember when I made 'A Scanner Darkly,' going, 'I hope people see it in theater - but I think it's going to be seen in someone's room at two in the morning.' It's that kind of movie. And I would have loved if it had been available on multiple formats at the moment it opened.
The best thing for your psyche as you try to accomplish anything, really, is to just concentrate on all the little things. And not just as a means to an end, but truly enjoy them.
There's a long history of people who spent that $300,000 on their first film and weren't quite ready, and then they never did it again 'cause they were out of synch with where they were, and they would never raise that money again.
'Slacker' is so not about navel-gazing.
My plan B has always been to make a film about people who talk a lot.
It's just too late to ban all guns. There are 300 million. We should've done that after the Civil War - that's when we should've taken away guns and defined what militias were. But we didn't do it then, and we can't now.
Ulrik Ottinger was the most real and experimental of all the German New Wave directors. She was probably the most out-there, too. She's a fascinating artist in that world.
'The Newton Boys' was the one time I've made a film with really active characters who weren't at all self-reflexive and just plowed through their lives. There's a part of everyone that's like that. We have a biological imperative to keep living, keep moving forward... We have no choice.
We emphasize negativity and violence in the media because that's what grabs everybody's attention, but in the real world, it's mostly people being very cooperative and caring and connected and kind. That's the norm of human experience. And yet, what gets our attention is the very opposite.
I think you get in trouble if you make experimental big studio films.
County jail in some ways can be the most dangerous because it's often the least regulated.
As I get older, my emotions are closer to the surface.
You're always just trying to make your film, tell the story you're trying to tell - best you can, you know.
I was dating girls who were actresses, and that was fun, so I took a playwriting class. But that was short-lived. That was one year. Around that time, I was seeing movies that were making me think in terms of images.
We filmmakers are control freaks. For us, it's about bending the elements of a story into existence.
Some of our favorite films are obviously not written by the person who directed it. And yet a 'Taxi Driver,' or some Nicholas Ray movie, like 'In a Lonely Place,' seems so personal or obsessive or whatever.
I've always been interested in the industrialization of our food; it's been an issue for me from an environmental and animal rights and human health perspective.
A certain kind of film is a big theatrical film and a certain kind of film isn't. It doesn't bother me so much that you can pick your format.
I remember playing for coaches who seemed like military-type guys. It always rubbed me the wrong way.
I don't want to be nostalgic for some kind of laid-back Austin where nothing was happening.
The pop culture tends to go to the lowest denominator, so cinema is in a weird place, due to its mass nature. It's diluted down to very little: simple stories and simple politics.
I'd like to see people get sued if they wrote a bad review of my movie. If you can't say something nice, you shouldn't say anything at all.
Trump has a lot less than he says he does.
A lot of Luis Bunuel's later, European films are all great.
I admire people who can just brazenly go through the world.
The truth will only be told over a career.
Whatever story you want to tell, tell it at the right size.
As you get older, you want less from the world; you just want to experience it. Any barriers to feeling emotions get dismantled. And ordinary things become beautifully poetic.
I always had that long-term vision. Even getting going with cinema, knowing it was such a long road to be able to make films, but I always had a long term. Whenever I was starting out, I had that patience.
Every film's different; every story is so different. But I think I've always been attracted to try to take something minimal and to maximize it cinematically. To find out if I can I really go all the way with one idea.
If you make a film about childhood, you've got to pick a moment - you know, 'The 400 Blows.'
There are really a lot of dark shadings to a lot of my stuff.
I grew up in a little town in east Texas where it was really not on the table to question certain things like whether you should eat meat or not.
I wrote a script - a script about a guy working on the automobile assembly line; I never could get money for that. I did a pilot about minimum wage workers for HBO that didn't get picked up; they thought it was depressing, even though it was a comedy.
The theatrical marketplace is a challenge. What do you have to do to get someone to purchase a movie ticket to your movie? You have to do something that they've never seen before; you've got to enthrall them in a new way.
Every day's a hustle.
In interviews, I never wanted to play into the myth of, 'Yeah, I was sitting there doing nothing, and then made 'Slacker.'' No. I'd been making shorts, a Super-8 feature, and running a film society. I always try to stress to people that there's a lot of work involved and years of preparation. But no one wants to hear that part.
The film culture has no room for ideas. The literary culture has some room, but not less than they should, and the academic culture has a lot, but there's no way to communicate it in a wide way.
I think they should make it a felony to criticise a film product. Particularly my film product. It's anti-American.
I'm a huge Nagisa Oshima fan. He was one of the most radical Japanese directors to come up in the '60s.
I loved 'Goodbye to Language.'
I guess I was just always one of those guys who asked those fundamental questions: 'Who am I? What's this for? Why? What does this mean? Is this real?' All these pretty basic questions. I like making movies about people who are self-conscious in that way, and are trying to feel their way through the world.
I lost a year or two in there, trying to get films financed that I didn't know would never get financing.
