No one can stop you from doing exactly what you want to do. If you can accept that the cavalry won't come, and if you can be the cavalry, it gives you a chance to be happy.
There's no excuse not to make films on weekends with friends.
I feel like, if I'm being honest with myself, my biggest skill set is as a writer 'cause I can do that quickly and I'm really grounded in story structure. Part of my success as an actor, is that I know story well. Part of my success as a director, is how well I know story. Same thing, as a producer. It all begins and ends with me as a story creator. But, I love doing it all.
Making movies that are really cheap and that can be owned and that you maintain your control of is really exciting.
When you're writing a 25-minute episode that can be anything, sometimes you just start with a character, and you let them walk into the room. Then you let your instinct guide you. That's how we made art when we were 15 years old. And that's so fun to us.
I really like Jason Blum a lot. We're friends, and while we make wildly disparate films, we share a philosophy about low-budget filmmaking, about taking chances on young filmmaking, taking risks and obliterating our salary so we can make something cheaply and if it wins everyone wins big.
If we have anything to offer, as filmmakers and as TV makers now, it's this ability to feel as close to a documentary as you can get in a narrative form.
For us, performance is everything. If we can get great actors in there who like us, and we really like, we feel pretty confident that we can make a movie work.
Well, I'll be honest with you, sometimes you don't know you're playing a moment that's going to be in a montage. Sometimes it's a scene that didn't work out the way you hoped it would be and ends up in a montage.
I really believe in constantly trying to find and support new ways of watching independent art, because the old ways are not working as well.
We've done things that are faster at times, but it's definitely different when we direct all the episodes because it's like we have to write them all, then shoot them all, then edit them all. So we have to just get ahead on those scripts basically.
Jay [Duplass] and I normally just sit around and people watch, and we talk about things that are happening in our lives, or with people that we've met. That's the soup from which our movies usually come from.
We've shot with babies and kids and it was tough. It's not easy. It looks tangential, but it is not.
I'm a narrative-minded actor. I'm thinking of the story. I'm not worried about whether the camera is on the right side of my face, or where the camera is. I'm just going for the story.
Somewhere in Time is in the top-five cheesiest movies ever made. Its super melodrama.
When you're improvising, it's fun to find something that you can lean on that is similar to your life experience. In my opinion, that's very helpful.
I question every move. I'm constantly second-guessing myself.
Obviously we know Bill Hader is funny and charming, but my question is, can he do raw humanity and naturalism? I think so.
"Repulsion" for me was a really big movie where I was like, "OK, technically there's nothing scary going on here but I'm kind of terrified." Something so tiny was devolving this whole world. I guess I've always been obsessed with what I call the "epically small" in cinema, and that's how one tiny, little weird thing can just explode everything.
I'm interested to see what happens to Spike Lee with limited resources, you know? I love Spike Lee's movies. But you know what? I kinda liked his movies when he used to scramble and fight more for them.
We allow the actors to do whatever they need to do or say to accomplish the goals that they want to accomplish.
We always joke now like, you know, the more experienced we get making stuff, we're like, "Never leave set without a shot of each of our lead characters driving in the car looking happy, looking moderately blank and looking sad." Because we know we're going to need these things.
A lot of it is found in the editing room and part of that is due to some of the improvisational tactics we employ on set. Part of it is that the shot goes a little bit long and they end up coming down to fit time.
It's not so much less pressure, it's less work, which is really exciting to me. I'm just personally looking forward to being able to spend a little more time doing different things, so that's really great. Jay and I are writing a book this year which is really fun and so yeah, I am very excited to spend less crazy 12-hour days on set. Those were taxing times.
It's kinda crazy to say, but the way Jay [Duplass] and I stay afloat, because we don't make particularly commercial fare that makes a lot of money, is that we make things cheaply and we make things small. We would kind of be afraid to go make a $100 million movie because you have to do certain things to it to have it make its money back.
