Top Joe Swanberg Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Joe Swanberg Biography

Joe Swanberg (born August 31, 1981) is an American independent film director, producer, writer, and actor. Known for micro-budget films which make extensive use of improvisation, Swanberg is considered a major figure in the mumblecore film movement. His films often focus on relationships, sex, technology, and the filmmaking process.

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Joe Swanberg Quotes

Most of my horror inspiration is really older stuff and really new stuff.

Horror, Inspiration, Older, Stuff

There's a lot of cultural pressure around specialness and seeing your family. I feel like everything gets jacked up a little bit because of all of these expectations of love and family bonding.

Expectations, Family, Littles, Pressure, Seeing

Am I doing the movie because I'm really excited about it and want to do it, or am I doing it because it seems like it's a big budget or something like that? It would still have to be the right thing, because my lifestyle's really cheap and I'm able to exist doing smaller movies, so if I'm able to do that, I'm happy to do that. But if something bigger came along that seems really cool, then that would be great.

Able, Budget, Movie, Thing, Want, Would Be

For a lot of people, you get cramped making decisions together and living together and every other thing that starts to happen. I just think you have to be vigilant in the relationship to carve out space for yourself. And a lot of that requires knowing what you need and communicating that to your partner, which is hard.

Knowing, Partner, People, Relationship, Space, Thinking

I've done a lot of movies that don't have any music in them, and I've always sort of had a kind of wary attitude about music because it can be so manipulative, and also because with pop music, I feel like everybody kind of has their own relationship to songs.

Attitude, Done, Everybody, Manipulative, Pop, Song

I do some freelance web design stuff. I taught a directing class for this not-for-profit organization here in Chicago a couple months ago. I wrote a thing for Filmmaker Magazine a couple months ago. Occasionally, I'll get to go speak to students at a university and make a little money that way, which is great. I really like doing that.

Class, Couple, Like, Money, Organization, Speak

I want to communicate with people, and I want to make something that works, and that people like. I'm never purposefully trying to be antagonistic or shocking or anything that would push an audience away. I'm always hoping to reach as many people as I can.

Audience, Away, People, Trying, Want, Works

I'm interested in taking things from my relationship that I don't see on screen - or that I feel like that could be useful or helpful if it were out in the open - and trying to put that in the movies as much as possible.

Feels, Helpful, Movies, Screen, Things, Trying

I think I'll try to keep working in film for a little bit. There's something still kind of magical about it, that I don't want to let go of.

Film, Keep, Let, Letting Go, Thinking, Trying

If you're a working mom, you're still expected to be a super-mom at home, buy organic food, put dinner on the table every night, and do all the research into preschools. It's really hard.

Dinner, Home, Mom, Night, Organic

A lot of the people I'm working with are not actors, or it's their first time in a movie. I'm not trying to shape performances, coax performances out of them. It's more like I want to put them in situations that naturally work or allow them to be themselves. If it's not happening, I'll just completely switch it up, rather than trying to make it work.

Actors, People, Shape, Trying, Work, Working

I always loved the work. As soon as I finished a movie, the most exciting thing to do was to try to jump into the next one. How I feel about it is that I learned a lot, so I'm grateful that I learned so much, at such a young age, rather than in my more adult professional career.

Grateful, Careers, Age, Thing, Career

We're looking for a certain kind of realism or naturalism, and we go about it in different ways, but I think we're all striving for the same end result, which is to capture the patterns of conversations and how people interact in a very realistic way.

Different, Interact, People, Thinking, Way, Ways

I don't have an agent. I don't take meetings or anything like that, so I don't really know what's out there. I'm not closed off to anything, but I'd just have to ask myself at every step if it's worth it.

Agents, Meetings, Step, Steps, Worth

I think there's been a gigantic shift in the way we talk to each other, and the way that we communicate with each other. So as a filmmaker, the stuff's always been really interesting to me, and I sort of considered a lot of my films horror films, the ones that were relationship dramas, because I feel like it was very easy to look at modern communication and the Internet and cell phones and all that stuff as horror movies, basically.

Basically, Communication, Considered, Drama, Easy, Thinking

During improvisations, I'll hear people bringing back up details from something I heard about at breakfast or something somebody was saying that they were thinking about, and it informs a rewriting of a scene.

Thinking, People, Details, Saying, Breakfast

I guess I probably see myself as a director. If I had to choose, I think that that's the aspect of the process that I'm most excited by.

Directors, Excited, Guess, Probably, Think, Thinking

In the 10 years that I've been a professional filmmaker, the film part of the film industry is really disappearing, right in front of our eyes.

Eye, Film, Filmmaker, Part, Professional, Years

I've never been able to develop a movie over several years, and keep coming back to it and adding to it. I get excited by the spark of an idea, and if I can't go make that, there's another idea that comes along that I get excited about. It has to happen quickly, in order for it to happen, at all.

Develop, Happen, Ideas, Keep, Order, Years

The more that I work with people that I don't know, the more I invite somebody in who's potentially going to really hate being there.

Hate, People, Being There, Know, Potentially

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