Gus Van Sant Quotes - Page 3

I've always been interested in how to present something that relates to our reality - which is not really... I don't even know if documentary itself does as good a job. It has its own problems in trying to get at the reality of the situation.

Casting the locals is my primary concern because all the other things you assume will be manageable.

As I do with most films, I try and find some music that you could use throughout, not just a sampling of lots of different artists.

There's a lot of films that have relatively rigid road maps because they have a script and others that are less rigid because they have less of a script, like 'Elephant.' The road map becomes more interpretive, maybe, than one with a detailed script. Editing-wise, they all have their problems.

If you don't have the story and the unfolding of the trajectory of the saga, it's like getting in a car and not having any gas.

Because I didn't have brothers, I was always interested in the kids down the street that had four brothers in their family, so I became one of them - but it was not my family. I've always been attracted to temporary families. They tend to be lost characters.

One of the things that is devastating is I realise I haven't been living a different life than when I was, like, 12. I'm shocked at how reclusive I've been since then. I was unaware of it until recently.

Yeah, Kubrick's a big influence. In something like 'A Clockwork Orange,' he is trying to use the practical light - I mean, at least he says that in his interviews, like they're not using traditionally Hollywood lights. In 'Elephant' we basically used no lights; we never really adjusted.

There are all kinds of ways that people present their films, but that's kind of a good feeling, if you can make it seem like the characters are really there.

My department is to get actors to do stuff.

Joanna Priestley is one of the most interesting and adept personal animators and filmmakers. I have enjoyed her work for years and been amazed at how she gets into her own thoughts onto the screen in a very elegant and focused way. You have to see this.

The biopic also wasn't a form that I necessarily believed in, because you can never really get it right, you know? It's also a form that's very popular - the straight-ahead biopic.

Well, I want to do everything in sort of a documentary style, ever since I started in the '80s.

When I grew up in the '60s, we were actually dominated by this, you know, sort of conforming '50s culture, even though we were like trying to express our own culture, like, the dominant culture was the thing that was forming us. And I think that that's true today.

Narcotics have been systematically scapegoated and demonized. The idea that anyone can use drugs and escape a horrible fate is ananathema to these idiots. I predict that in the near future, right wingers will use drug hysteria as a pretext to set up an international police apparatus.

If a movie isn't released, it's one thing, but if you know it will be, it's nice to have closure and see it come out.

I mean, I think I'm pretty sentimental.

I had wanted to do a comedy.

Free time keeps me going.

I find it interesting, the different rules that apply to journalism and drama, even though journalism has become more and more about entertainment, and entertainment has become more and more about journalism.

I have this new theory about films. It's almost like astrology, where if we started on a Tuesday the film will be different than if we started on a Wednesday. Not because of the planets. It's that sometimes you start with the wrong balance and the whole thing gets messed up.

Upon entering my vein, the drug would start a warm edge that would surge along until the brain consumed it in a gentle explosion.It began in the back of the neck and rose rapidly until I felt such pleasure that the world sympathizing took on a soft, lofty appeal.

If Im diagnosed with cancer I might become despondent, but someone young might not, and they might need connections with somebody outside their circle of family because their family is so despondent.

I think over the course of 14 films, I'm returning to a place that I know to tell a story... the same way Spielberg returned to fantasy, Lucas returned to the 'Star Wars' saga, or John Ford returned to the western.

Usually when I read something, first of all I'm looking for the story and then when I reread it, I'm sort of checking every part of it to see if every scene is necessary.