Todd Solondz Quotes - Page 3

Casting is great fun, except for the business of it. I love the casting process. I love the editing process. I love working with the music. And even prep is very exciting. But once you get there and the clock is ticking, all it is is stress.

You try to make them comfortable so they can do what they're best at, and make them shine. You always want to make an actor shine. I'm of the mind that there's no one - you, your mother, anyone, that if in the right place at the right time in the right context, couldn't shine in a movie. And so if it means, "Oh, I have to make them uncomfortable," then whatever it takes to get what I need up onscreen. It's all in the service of the story.

I think there are many advantages to not knowing any of my prior work. The narrative threads, I think, are totally accessible to anyone who may never have heard of me. There's a beginning, a middle, and an end - I don't think there's going to be any confusion there.

I can't please everybody and I don't try to. If I can please myself that's enough. For the rest, I just hope for the best.

A movie takes on its own life, and you have to respect that and be open to it.

You always have to be ahead of the audience so that they have to always catch up and know the movie's not quite going exactly where you think it's going, or expecting it to be going.

I always have to presume that each movie is my last movie because I never know if I'll get money again.

I always make mistakes and I always fix things up, as best I can, in the cutting room.

I love working with actors. If you cast the right person in the right part at the right time, they make you look like a better writer and director than you really are.

I love working with actors. I do.

Compromise is part and parcel of making a movie. It's a question of the kinds of compromises that you have to make.

There are a lot of ideas I have that I think would be very marketable and commercial, but they're not as compelling to me as the ones that are unmarketable, uncommercial, and unprofitable.

That said, be mindful, to someone who's never seen any of my work, it's just a movie with actors. So it's only those who of course know the earlier work that will see something is afoot, so to speak. But I don't want to intellectualize.