I like hiring people based on a feeling - this person gets it - rather than what they've done in the past.
Even in this world where you’re getting everything you need and having this nice life, there’s still loneliness and longing and disconnection.
Be willing to get fired for a good idea.
The past is just a story we tell ourselves.
I think, as you're growing up, your emotions are just as deep as they are when you're an adult. You're ability to feel lonely, longing, confused or angry are just as deep. We don't feel things more as we get older.
If you compromise what you're trying to do just a little bit, you'll end up compromising a little more the next day or the next week, and when you lift your head you're suddenly really far away from where you're trying to go.
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.
Don't differentiate between 'This is a job' and 'This is what I'm doing for fun.' It's all simultaneous.
You make a movie that is about what you want it to be about and let people have their reaction to it.
The things that are really out of control, and scary, are emotions - of people around you, that are unpredictable, or those in yourself which are unpredictable.
I think at the beginning of a project, you decide if you're in love with the idea and what it's about, or what you think it's about at that time at least. Then you commit to it, and once you've commit to it no matter what, no matter how many self doubts you have, you're in it. The ship's sailed, you can't turn around.
I feel like you only have so much time to make stuff. I'm definitely aware of that. I'm also excited about it.
Emotions are messy and hard to figure out.
It's fun when you start a movie, because it's kind of like you get to go Christmas shopping... you get to make your wish list and you start thinking about what each character needs.
I just want to make whatever is exciting.
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.
If I leave my phone in the car and go to dinner or something for a few hours, I'm very proud of myself.
I'm not one to intellectualize why I did something.
I think the way kids create is so inspiring. They're drawing a picture? They love the picture they drew; they're not tortured about it.
As a parent, your perspective of childhood is through the eyes of this person that you care so much about and you just want the world to be great for them. You want their life to be easy and happy.
Doing a documentary is about discovering, being open, learning, and following curiosity.
Finding a kid that could be introspective and internal and thoughtful, and then also be wild and free and guileless and physical, it was hard. So at the end we started getting down to panic time, and we still hadn't found our Max. And we decided to go about it a different way. We said, "Let's just find friends of ours that live in interesting cities in the country that maybe aren't as big, and people that don't do casting." And thinking maybe you find a place that has an artistic community, maybe we'll find some interesting kids from there.
What the world is like from a nine-year-old's point of view? My memory is that nothing is explained to you, you've got to try to figure it out, pick up clues from the people around you, try to figure it out from their reactions.
Big emotions that are unexplained are really scary. At least to me.
Music is thousands and thousands of years old and I don't think that basic, primitive connection to the language of music ever changes.
