I think if something's emotionally real - and I'm not even talking about in movies or in art, but in life - you can't really argue with that, even if your intellectual mind might know differently.
— Spike Jonze
I started directing videos at the same time that Michel Gondry was starting to direct videos, and I watched what he'd do. They all seemed to be pushing some new visual effects idea, but never just for spectacle. They all captured a feeling.
I am better at math than spelling.
I've done a couple of interviews, and I realized how uncomfortable I felt as soon as I started talking.
Pop music, I think there's a reason why kids connect to it.
I'm fortunately not, like, typecast. I don't have to just do one kind of thing; I can do all kinds of things that reflect different parts of me.
Nicolas Cage, I would love to work with him again. He's just a fearless madman. He'll go anywhere you want to go. He would not say 'no' to anything.
I love when me and my friends don't know how to make something - there's that risk of failure, which should be there. If it's guaranteed not to fail, it's something you already know how to do.
I never knew how to do anything before I did it, really.
There was definitely a point in my thirties when I thought, 'Oh, wow, I'm not the youngest person on the set anymore.' But I like it. Working with younger artists is totally exciting.
I'm always amazed when any actor can decipher my direction.
If I leave my phone in the car and go to dinner or something for a few hours, I'm very proud of myself.
Is an audience open to seeing a film that isn't what they expect when they see a film that's been adapted from a children's book?
I like Kanye, and I care about him.
I knew I could write infinitely about relationships. That's the most beautiful, most confusing, most rewarding, most heartbreaking thing in our lives - and not just romantic relationships: that's all relationships.
What I learned from the Beastie Boys was to be independent. They set up their own world separate from the label. They built their own studio.
On everything I do I'm always taking someone's money, whether it's a movie studio or a record label. Somebody's paying for it, and I'm always respectful of that. But I'm never going to compromise.
I feel like every movie, I've learned more and more about what I think of the world and what I'm trying to figure out.
The best videos were the ones where I became friends with the artists first.
I was only going to go to college because that's what I thought you were supposed to do.
The market groups and demographics said, 'Teenage guys don't read magazines.'
Arcade Fire has such intimacy and epic-ness, at the same time, and that's really inspiring.
I think there's a knee-jerk reaction to things from parents.
Chris Cooper I got to work with many times.
When I'm making stuff, the thing that excites me most is not the result, but the process and trying to do something I've never done before.
Emotions are messy and hard to figure out. Hard to know where you start and the next person stops. Even as an adult, that's a hard thing to know. As a kid, it can be really confusing, because it's all new and you're trying to sort of make your map.
Samantha Morton is one of the best actresses in the world.
The thing I remember most about having a tantrum is not the rage during the tantrum, but the being freaked out afterwards, and embarrassed, and guilty. It's scary to lose control of yourself.
I definitely check my phone for texts a lot - like, 'Did anyone text me? Is anyone thinking about me? Does anyone love me?'
If I heard somebody else say, 'I worked on a movie for five years', I'd be like, 'What? How could it take that long? What were you doing?'
Moms are people, too. Moms make mistakes, too.
I would love to make video games.
Be willing to get fired for a good idea.
I definitely enjoy getting to know people I find inspiring.
I'm always inspired by other filmmakers, whether it's a shot or the way they handle tone.
The Beastie Boys are guys I loved before I met them, and when I got to know them, we started a magazine together, and we started making videos together, and a lot of it came out of us just cracking ourselves up, like going to the fake mustache store and buying fake mustaches.
As a director, you never get to watch other directors work, and you also don't get to collaborate with other directors that much.
A great poem leaves so much room for everybody to have such a different reaction to it.
Movies, they take years of my life, so I'm fortunate that I get to work in a lot of different mediums.
There were times in 'Adaptation' during the editing where I really thought, 'Okay, well, this was a noble failure. I tried to do something good, but this is not going to work.'
Every actor I've worked with I want to work with again.
I'll still make movies for studios, but my editing process will be much further removed from the studio system. Because I don't understand it. I don't understand the whole testing-numbers thing. It is not how I want to make movies. So if that's how they do it, then I don't think I want to do it.
Big emotions that are unexplained are really scary. At least to me.
I wasn't a film kid.
Obviously, movies and music videos are different because they're different lengths, and in a movie, you have more time to explore an idea. But I feel like they're all the same, really.
I've got to say, I've probably seen a lot more of the Three Stooges than of the Marx Brothers.
When you're close to somebody, you can never really know how they're experiencing the world.
The world is becoming nicer and easier, but that doesn't mean we are any less lonely or any more connected.
I'm in awe of directors like the Coen brothers who can shoot their script and edit it, and that's the movie. They're not discovering the movie in postproduction. They're editing the script they shot.
I always aspire to that, where it feels like the film was made by the characters as opposed to the filmmakers. I try to be invisible.
